“Unless something changes that leads to the birth rate exceeding the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist, and this will be a great loss to the world,” said Musk, who recently acquired Twitter, in a post on his account on the site.
Musk had previously indicated several times his concern about what he described as a global population “collapse”, as the greatest potential threat to human civilization.
For its part, the Japanese news agency, “Kyodo”, indicated that Musk’s statements came in response to a tweet published by the agency last April, which stated that Japan’s population fell by a record 644,000 people to just over 125.5 million in 2021, which represents The eleventh consecutive year of decline, the largest decline since 1950, when comparable data became available.
The Japanese government has made great efforts to combat the challenges of an aging population and a declining workforce, hoping to ease the labor shortage by trying to increase foreign workers under a relaxed visa regime.