日本人口危机

非文学翻译第三次作业

国家概况和政策

Japan’s Demographic Crisis日本人口危机

According to the 2000 population census, Japan’s total population was 126.93 million. Based on expected birth, fertility, and mortality rates, this number would likely peak in 2006, at 127.74 million. Thereafter, it would begin a secular decline, dropping gradually at first but eventually reaching 100.6million by 2050.

据2000年人口普查，日本的总人口为126，930，000人。根据预期出生率，生育率和死亡率，这个数字很可能在2006年达到顶峰，达到127，740，000人。此后，就开始长期持续下降，2050年最终达到100，600，000人。

Ja pan’s “baby boom generation” generally referred to persons born from 1947 to 1949. In 2004, this group comprised 6.8 million people—larger than all groups before or since. These boomers would begin retiring in 2007, when they reached the age of 60. But because of a sharp drop in Japan’s fertility rate, these workers would not be easily replaced. The fertility rate began dropping just after the baby boom, from 3.7 in 1950 to a surprisingly low 1.29 by 2004. Japanese women had been marrying later and later and generally producing only one child in their early 30s. Since the replacement rate in Japan was 2.08, this effectively meant a decline in the population, in the absence of significant immigration.

1947年到1949年出生的人通常被称为日本的“婴儿潮一代”。2004年，这一群人就有6，800，000人，比所有以往和以后群体都要大。到2007年，这些婴儿潮一代达到六十岁时，将开始退休。但由于日本的生育率急剧下降，这些工人不会被轻易取代。就在婴儿潮以后生育率就开始下降。1950年，3.7亿到2004年竟然低至1.29亿。日本女性结婚越来越晚，一般在她们三十多岁才生一个孩子。

At the same time, improvements in health care and rapidly increasing incomes had pushed up life expectancy to a record high level—78 years for males, 85 years for females. The confluence of these two trends, as Figure A indicates, produced a bubble of elderly—some 22 million by the year 2000. Moreover, this number would continue to grow rapidly through 2025, when it reached 34.7 million.

同时，医疗保健的改善以及收入的增高将寿命推上了创纪录的高水平--男性78岁，女性85岁。这两种趋势结合起来，就如图A所示。到2000年，产生泡沫增长老人达到22000000人。此外，这一数字将继续迅速增长，到2025年将达到34，700，000人。

One implication of these numbers was that Japan’s labor force was shrinking—and had been shrinking since 1999. On the one hand, this trend had helped hold down unemployment at a time when Japanese business was rationalizing. The decline in Japan’s working-age population, from

68% in 2000, would reach 60% in 2020 and just 53% by 2050. And because of the structural adjustment Japanese firms had recently made, the number of permanent employees had dropped sharply (especially males), with more job openings in temporary employment and part-time employment. As this trend deepened, many Japanese worried about maintaining the sort of skilled workforce that Japan needed for advanced manufacturing and services.

这些数字的暗示之一是日本的劳动力正在萎缩。自1999以来，日本的劳动力就一直在萎缩。一方面，这种趋势帮助日本在企业合理化的时候解决了失业问题。日本劳动年龄的人口正在下降，从2000年的68%，到2020年将会减到60%，到了2050就只有53%。最近由于日本企业结构的调整，永久雇员的数量急剧下降（特别是男性）。临时就业和兼职工作就出现了很多职位空缺。随着这种趋势的加深，许多日本人担心如何才能维持日本先进制造业和服务业所需的熟练劳动力。

Thus, the portion of working-aged to elderly Japanese would drop by nearly half: from 3.6 to 1 in 2000 to 1.9 to 1 in 2025. This had startling implications for household savings (see Exhibit 8), for social security funding and, thus, for pension and medical-care benefits.

因此，工作年龄到老年这一部分的人将会下降一半。从2000年的3.6至1，到2025年就只有1.9至1。这将暗示着惊人的福利需求如居民储蓄（见图表8），社会保障，养老保险和医疗保健等。

Japan’s pension system Prior to 2004, when the Koizumi government accomplished significant reform, Jap an’s pension system was heading toward bankruptcy. When originally created in the 1940s, the public pension system provided a single layer of remuneration-based, proportional pension. In the revision of 1954, the pension was restructured into a two-layer system—the first tier a fixed payment, and the second tier a remuneration-based proportion. A third revision, in 1961, added a national pension scheme for self-employed workers, as well as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries workers.

日本的养老金制度2004年之前，小泉政府在完成重大改革时，日本的养老金系统走向破产。这种公共养老保险制度最初创建于20世纪40年代，只提供了一个单层的薪酬比例退休金。1954年经过修订，改为了两层系统--第一层固定支付，第二层是以薪酬比例。1961年，经第三次修订，为自雇工人，农林渔业工人增加了一个国家养老金计划。

The basic pension system was financed by a fixed amount of insurance premiums. The premium by the end of 2004 was ¥13,300 per month per person. Government financed one-third of the benefit payment from its general account (to be raised gradually to half with the 2004 reform). The amount of monthly benefits paid to more than 31 million people was ¥66,200 (multiplied by the ratio of the number of participating months to the full 480 months).

基本养老保险的经费是固定金额的保险费。2004年底的保险费是每人每月13300元。政府从一般账户出资三分之一（2004改个后逐渐上升到一半）。每个月支付给31，000，000多人的保险金是66，200元（乘以参加月份的数量比，全部参加是480个月）。