Demography

The population in 1999 was 127,000,000. The country is heavily urbanized, and urban areas have extremely high population densities. According to the 1995 census, 81 million people (65 percent) live in urban areas; that constitutes only 3 percent of the land area.


During the last 150 years of industrialization and economic development, the population has grown from around thirty million to its present size. This increase occurred as a result of a rapid demographic transition characterized by an enormous movement of people from rural to urban areas, dramatic decreases in infant mortality, increases in longevity, widespread reliance on birth control, and transformations of family composition from large, multigenerational extended households to small nuclear families.
Life expectancy is the highest in the world, and the birthrate has been declining dramatically. Because of these trends, the population is projected to peak early in the twenty-first century and then shrink.