this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Those look very similar to me. I would say Japan is now where Poland will be in 10 years. Why it's a problem for Japan but not Poland?
That's the thing about population pyramids - they don't just move up evenly. They're adjusted by the ongoing mortality of each age group and the size of the next age group down. Poland and Japan are on the same trajectory, but Japan is, effectively, much further along. More ~30-40 years than ~10. The emphasis is less on the largest 'boom' generation, and much more on the general trend of the 'youngest' generations shrinking, growing, or being stable. In Poland, it's uneven - closer to shrinking than stable, but more stable than Japan, which is only shrinking.
Even relatively small differences can have an outsized effect in making the older generations an ever-larger proportion of the population despite their lifetime mortality going up with each age bracket. Compare the percentages here. "Boom" generation aside, Japan's retiree cohort is roughly 150% the youth cohort. That's not a good sign. For Poland to end up with those numbers in a decade, it would have to have effectively no mortality in the elder cohorts - extremely unlikely.
That being said, it is a problem for Poland going forward - as well as many other developed countries.
Exactly, Japan is hitting it sooner but most countries will have the same issue eventually. The main difference I think is that Japan is still refusing to address this issue by allowing more immigration while some European countries are trying to do it already. So I think this is going to be a scary but interesting experiment. Poland will go the way of Japan, Spain will try to support the population growth with immigrants. It will be interesting to see where each will be in 30 years. We can use Japan as a canary in the meantime.
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