I read a book about a society in which "living alone" will soon become the norm.
In Japan, there are a significant number of people who do not or cannot get married.
According to estimates for 2020, the percentage of never-married people who have never been married at age 50 is 27% for men and 18% for women.
Statistics show that the percentage of people who are not married by the age of 50 who marry afterwards is less than 1%.
I got married for the first time at the age of 63, so I was the exception to the rule.
This trend is expected to continue, and by 2040, one in three men and one in five women will be unmarried for life.
The high rate of unmarried men is due to the fact that there are more births than women, so there is a surplus of men. The number is said to be 3.4 million.
By the way, the prefecture with the largest surplus of men in Japan is Ibaraki Prefecture, where I live.
This is a global trend, not just in Japan, with 9 million men in the U.S. and 30 million men in China. In India, there are 50 million more men than women.
This means that even if all women got married, this many men would not be able to marry.
In fact, not all women will marry, so there will be far more men who will never marry in their lifetime.
Marriage is already becoming a luxury for men.
Japan is facing the problem of a declining birthrate and aging population, but in reality, the number of children a married couple has is two, so if we increase the number of couples getting married, we can prevent the birthrate from declining.
Not long ago, there was a tendency that men who were not married could not get ahead in the company.
This is because if you are married, you have the responsibility to support your family, and it is not easy to quit the company, so it is convenient for the company.
There were a lot of workplace marriages and some old lady trying to get unmarried men and women of their age together.
As expected, there is no such company now, and the caring old lady is gone.
By the way, there are different reasons why men and women don't get married, and quite a few people find it easier to be alone than to get married.
There are a certain number of people, both men and women, who do not like to be constrained, as if marriage means they will not have free time or be able to spend money freely.
But you can't really know that until you are married.
If you look at the happiness levels of married and unmarried people in various surveys, you will find that married people are overwhelmingly happier than unmarried people.
It could be interpreted that this is because many people got married because they didn't want to be alone.
I'm really glad I got married.
A famous writer once wrote that he feels happy whenever he wakes up at night and sees his wife sleeping next to him.
I agree with that opinion.
To marry or not to marry, it's up to the individual.
To marry once is a man's duty, to marry twice is folly, to marry three times is madness.
It has been said above, but it is certain that we are now living in a world where we cannot even fulfill our duty of marriage.
