Shifting The Issue from Real Trouble

“Work Style Reform” by Japanese Government might shift the issue from facing Japanese demographic problem itself.

For many years in Japan, their “labor productivity” has been significantly low, compared to the other countries.  It is said, Japanese labors should have multi skills with more precise, more rapid operations.  The employees is said to be responsible to those low efficiency rates, not employers or politicians.

But is it true?
My English friend told me a fact.

“The major source of Japanese social and economical issues is their demographic problem.”

Let me examine from open data by World Bank.

https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/world-development-indicators

It is called “labor productivity” in Japanese language, but its English term shows the easy understanding about it, that is “GDP per capita”.

This graph (Fig. 1) is GDP per capita (current US$) for several countries (G7 and BRICS).

The RED curve is for Japan.

Japan's slump in economical growth had started from 1995 after "Bubble Collapse".

However, why Japanese GDP per capita has fallen in a long slump?

Let me compare it among G7 and BRICS.

[Fig. 2] GDP per capita growth (annual %) 【G7】

[Fig. 3] GDP per capita growth (annual %) 【BRICS】

They seems to be similar curves tendency among G7.  The trend may be long-term decreasing.

I said above (cf. Fig.1) that only Japan is in slump after 1995.  (So-called) Abenomics has least effect on this long, long slump.

At first, we are examining about "GDP per capita”.

Why Japanese people feel their labor productivity is low?

What is happening?

So, let us see from the different view point, which is "GDP" itself.

[Fig. 4] GDP (current US$)

[Fig. 5] GDP (current LCU)

Oh......, in the Local Currency Unit [Fig. 5], the slump started from 1991, but more terrible slump can be observed from 1995 in the US$ graph [Fig. 4].

Okay.
Let me see about CURRENCIES.
Yes, it is true from long-term down trend for Japanese YEN, but the curve does not have specific characteristics.

As you know, about 100 Japanese YEN can be estimated as about 1 US DOLLAR.

(But this is partially scaled for Japanese YEN and Italian LILA to easily compare in one figure.)

[Fig. 6] Official exchange rate (LCU per US$, period average) 

We had discussed about GDP itself.  Let us talk about "per capita" part -- Population.

[Fig. 7] Population (G7)

[Fig. 8] Population (BRICS)

Hmmm, Japanese Population curve seems to be in a plateau for a decade.
This is not the major cause for long-term economical slump.

But we are very close to the answer.

Let me focus on the Total Population for working generation (age: 15 - 64).

[Fig. 9] Total Population for working generation (age: 15 - 64)

Oh, the peak is in the past for Japanese curve about two decades before.

Let me see more precisely......

[Fig. 10] Population Rate for working generation (age: 15 - 64) towards Total Population.

THAT'S IT!!

Like a rolling stone on the downhill from 1991 for Japan.

I guess (as one concerned person as Japanese), there was a lot of political failures in Japan after "Bubble Collapse".

Those Japanese people tends to seek a source of troubles in the independent person(s), rather than the social or political system.

This could be the real source of troubles.

Besides.

[Fig. 11] xcor-Analyzer

My xcor-Analyzer can show you more correlation change in the time-dependent dynamics.

These figures are Inter-channel Cross Correlation Functions.

LEFT channel is for SP.POP.1564.TO.ZS (from World Bank stat), which is labor productivity of Japan.

RIGHT channel is for NY.GDP.PCAP.CD (also from World Bank stat), which is population of working generation of Japan.

For figures from top-left to down-right, the time lag to analyze is changed for 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years.

The ridgeline with deep red color shows almost maximum correlation between those LEFT and RIGHT channels.

It is hard to interpret what is the result of these figures, but the strong correlation is found, especially for Bottom-Right figure.  The peak is sharp.

This might be the result that there is the strong correlation between Japanese labor productivity and its population of working generation for 25 years period especially.

But population issue cannot be recovered at once.

Therefore, the next issue is how to maintain the Japanese Economy without increasing its population.

This is a fact check for what my English friend told me.

However, to tell the truth, my friend also wrote “Japan’s presence in the international stock market is declining to the 8% or less.  This means important that the crash of Japanese market was critical for world economy BEFORE JAPAN’S DECLINING”.

Yes, it is "AFTER JAPAN’S DECLINING” now.

So you might be better to be careful about the Chinese population curve.

It showed before in this entry (Fig. 10).