The government in Japan is facing an immediate demographic crisis with regards to seniors, whose numbers relative to the general population are increasing rapidly. One of the main problems is where they are going to live out their lives.
According to a 2015 report by the Japan Policy Council, Tokyo anticipates a deficit of 130,000 "caregiving slots" by 2025, an estimate that assumes that a good portion of the elderly are going to require some level of nursing care. Both the private and public sectors are trying to create nursing facilities, but the endeavor may not be sustainable: Once the baby boom generation starts dying at the end of the 2020s, many of the facilities will become redundant and expensive to maintain.
Nevertheless, local governments in Tokyo and other densely populated areas are making arrangements to have their poorer elderly residents shipped off to nursing facilities in the countryside, where the problem at the moment tends to be a lack of human resources.
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