Japan's accelerating population decline poses a set of daunting challenges ahead for local governments as they struggle to sustain administrative services for residents. A study group at the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, in a mid-term report on the agenda for local governments toward 2040, urged municipalities across the country to use and share their resources such as manpower and facilities in "wise and strategic" manners by overcoming organizational and regional divisions. Particularly in rural depopulated areas it is clear that municipalities with depleted finances will no longer be able to provide full administrative services for their residents. They will need to work with other government or private-sector organizations to serve their needs. What ultimately matters is that local residents' needs are met, not who provides the services.

The demographic picture of 2040 painted in the ministry's report released last month, citing data from the forecasts by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, is quite bleak. The nation's population, which peaked at 128 million in 2008, will have dropped to 110.9 million in 2040 — around which time the population is forecast to fall by roughly 900,000 each year. It's feared that the population decline will reach 40-50 percent in many small municipalities. It's estimated that the annual number of newborns, which has finally dipped below 1 million, will fall to 740,000 — compared with 2 million in the early 1970s when the postwar baby boomer generation had children. The population decline is set to continue over the long term even if the fertility rate recovers in the coming decades.

It's estimated that the aging of society will peak in 2042, when people aged 65 or older are expected to account for 36 percent of the population — while the number of those 75 or older is expected to continue expanding through the mid-2050s. Problem arising from this demographic trend will be even more severe in the big metropolitan areas surrounding Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, where large numbers of migrants from rural areas will enter their senior years, likely straining the medical and nursing care services. The anticipated increase in senior citizens living alone suggests that families and local communities cannot be counted on as a welfare safety net for the elderly.