A report by Japan’s police has revealed that about 40,000 people in the country died alone in their homes between January and July this year, media reports said. As per the United Nations, Japan has the world’s oldest population as of now.
Nearly 4,000 people were discovered dead in their homes, having passed away over a month earlier. According to the National Police Agency, 130 of these bodies remained unnoticed for an entire year before being found.
Japanese public TV network NHK has said that the police agency will pass on its findings to a government group looking into the unattended deaths.
Age group of the dead
Data from the National Police Agency for the first half of 2024 reveals that 37,227 people living alone were found dead in their homes, with over 70% of them being 65 years or older.
About 40% of the people who died alone were found within a day, meanwhile, 3,939 bodies were found after over a month.
The largest group in the dataset consisted of individuals aged 85 and above, accounting for 7,498 of the discovered bodies. This was followed by 5,920 bodies found among those aged 75 to 79, and 5,635 among those aged 70 to 74.
Earlier this year, the Japanese National Institute of Population and Social Security Research projected that by 2050, the number of elderly citizens (aged 65 and above) living alone will reach 10.8 million. The overall number of single-person households is expected to rise to 23.3 million by the same year.
