7 Billion Humans | Empty Nests in the Aging Developed World: Empty Nests | Too Many Elderly | Shimonoseki City, Japan

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Empty Nests | Too Many Elderly | Shimonoseki City, Japan

Japan has too many elderly and not enough young people to staff all the nursing homes and care units in hospitals, so they have a program that brings in thousands of Filipino and Indonesian workers just for that purpose.

In this hospital robotic “legs” are used as therapy to help those too frail to walk. Immigrant workers are being brought in for the same reason the robotics companies are working on solutions for a growing, lonely elderly population.

All of these robotics folks talk about studies showing that more and more elderly are isolated and have no one to relate to. In 2009, nineteen percent of Japan’s elderly died with no one around them. They have a word for it: “Kodokushi,” meaning “lonely death.”