Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in graying Japan by 2025.

Japan faces a 16% slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, the government estimates, raising worries about who will do the work in a country unused to, and unwilling to contemplate, large-scale immigration. The current fertility rate is 1.3 babies per woman, far below the level needed to maintain the population, while the government estimates that 40% of the population will be over 65 by 2055, raising concerns about who will look after the graying population.

Japan could save 2.1 trillion yen ($21 billion) of elderly insurance payments in 2025 by using robots that monitor the health of older people, so they don’t have to rely on human nursing care. Caregivers would save more than an hour a day if robots helped look after children, older people and did some housework, it added. Robotic duties could include reading books out loud or helping bathe the elderly. Mommy, I want Yuki 2.0 to wipe my @**.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Asia, Career, Japan, News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.