The 2010 white paper on the aging society, approved by the Cabinet last month, shows a rapidly graying population. As of Oct. 1, 2009, people age 65 or over numbered a record 29.01 million, or 22.7 percent of the total population, a rise of 0.6 percentage point from 2008. The number of elderly people who live alone will increase. Among women in that age group, the percentage of such people is expected to rise from 19.4 percent in 2010 to 20.9 percent in 2030. For men, the percentage rise will be almost as steep — from 11 percent in 2010 to 17.8 percent in 2030.
Surveys of people aged 60 or over included in the white paper show that people who live alone, who are not well off financially or who have health problems tend to be isolated from their communities and other people: 41.2 percent of men and 32.4 percent of women who live alone, 16.5 percent of those who have health problems, and 19.3 percent of those who are extremely poor communicate with other people (including via telephone and e-mail) only once every two or three days or less frequently.
Conspicuously 24.4 percent of men living alone say they do not have any person to rely on when they face difficulty. The corresponding figure for women living alone is 9.3 percent. In Tokyo's 23 wards, 2,211 people age 65 or over died in their homes in 2008, about 1.6 times more than in 2002. It is assumed that many of them died alone.