Health and welfare statistics in Japan.

To abstract the health and welfare status of Japan, the essences of related statistics are referred and introduced. Those who want to know more detail are recommended to get a book "Health and Welfare Statistics in Japan" published by the government.


POPULATION
Total population is 124 million in 1993 (Table 1). The increase rate per year was as high as 1 or 2 percent until nineteen fifties, but it is lower than 0.3 percent in recent years. The population pyramid is bell shape (Figure 1). The historically world first rapid increase of the proportion of elderly population can be mentioned. The proportion of 65 years and over has increased from five percent to thirteen percent in recent forty years, and is expected to double in next thirty years (Table 2). The baby boom shortly after the last war and the recent declining tendency of birth are the main reasons of it.

VITAL STATISTICS
The number of births in recent years is small as 1.2 million. The birth rate is now one third of the rate in baby boom years of 1947-49 (Table 3). The total fertility rate is less than 1.5 in 1993 (Table 4). Improvement of death rate is remarkable, and more prominent improvement is observed in infant death rate, which is less than 5 per 1000 births in recent years (Table 3).
Neonatal, foetal or perinatal death rate have been also decreased. The increase of divorce can be mentioned (Table 5).
Crude death rates have been increased in recent ten years, but it is contributed by the aging of the population. All the age specific rates show significant decrease ( Table 6). The death rate of cerebrovascular diseases shows remarkable decrease in recent 20 years. That of malignant neoplasms is not necessarily increasing, when the rate is adjusted for age ( Figure 2).
The life table shows the expectation of life at any ages has been prolonged, the expectation of life at age 0 is 76.25 and 82.51 for male and female respectively in 1993 (Table 7).

PUBLIC HEALTH
There are several Japanese encephalitis and schistosomiasis japonica reported in each year, but there are no rabies (Table 8).
In spite of decrease of death rates of many diseases, the number of patients or prevalence of patients treated is increasing for many diseases (Table 9).
The number of induced abortion is decreasing in every age group with only one exception of the youngest age group (Table 10). The prevalence of hypertension in elderly people is higher than 20 percent (Table 11). The number of inpatients and outpatients has been increased (Table 12).
The proportion of population supplied with piped water is more than 90 percent, but that with sewage system is not enough high, though it is increasing (Table 13, 14).

MEDICAL CARE
One quarter of all population have subjective symptoms, and a half of old people have them (Table 15). One and half thousand of beds in medical institution are provided for each hundred thousand population (Table 16). Length of stay in hospitals for one admission is about fifty days in average (Table 17). One hundred seventy-five physicians and six hundred thirtynine nurses are working for every hundred thousand population (Table 18). A number of aged people have health notebooks, health educations and health consultations. And a large number of people get several kinds of health examinations.
More than four million people get stomach cancer examination every year for example (Table 19).