User:Bm06493/sandbox

Article Evaluation

 * The article on aging is most certainly relevant and pertains unanimously to information related to the aging process. Although they cover a variety of information, the entirety of the article shows some relation to the process of aging.
 * This article also investigates several perspectives towards aging, providing various understandings of the process. They cover both the biological aspect of aging for sexually-reproducing organisms as well as the social and cultural facets of the aging process. There are also a litany of sources that provide an inclusive blend of ideas about the topic.
 * In the sociology section of the article, there are three references. Two of them are books and one is a scholarly journal article.  These are all appropriate sources on aging, in which the citation link takes you to the correct section of the reference list.  From there, only one has an ISBN that can be clicked on and easily located.  The other two must be manually searched.  While this entails more effort, they are still readily available to anyone who is interested in reading them or corroborating the facts from the article.
 * The references in this article come from reliable sources about the process of aging. While many of the articles differ in content and perspective, they come from books and scholarly articles that can offer useful insight into the process of aging.
 * While there are some older articles, the information referenced from them is not outdated. In addition to this, there are several newer articles that corroborate the previous findings of the older articles.  Some facts seem to lack a source, but this information may be common knowledge to anyone who has studied or has a basic understanding of aging.  Perhaps, it could still be beneficial to provide a source for some of these facts for the reader's benefit.
 * The talk page has a couple posts pertaining to format and content. One post outlines the correction to a reference and another one suggests a potentially useful meta-analysis that could be implemented.
 * This article on aging has a b-class rating, meaning that it provides a substantial overview of aging. While it still requires some editing and improvement to become a "good article", given the high-importance of the topic, it is mostly complete and lacks and significant issues.  It is also a part of 5 different WikiProjects: Aging and culture, biology, health and fitness, medicine, and world's oldest people.

Article Proposal
This article covers the topic of aging in Japan, primarily why there is such a large elderly population. It is lacking in it's description of the causes. The causes they do provide explain why they have a lot of elderly individuals, but not why they have one of the oldest elderly populations. Japan's life expectancy is greater than the world's life expectancy and greater than the life expectancy of the United States. This article could benefit from further explanation of the higher expected life expectancy of Japan's big elderly population. There is currently little discussion on the talk page and no suggested updates. This article provides a brief overview of the definition of age stratification, but it is simply lacking content in general. There could be further discussion of the implications of age stratification, how it occurs, why it occurs, and other similar inquiries. There are no suggested changes to content currently listed on the talk page.
 * Aging in Japan - preferred topic
 * Age Stratification

Selected Article
In this article, they do a sufficient job of covering the population demographics; however, the causes are not thoroughly outlined. They discuss the growing elderly population, but they do not provide an in-depth analysis of the causal factors that led to it. This article could benefit from further explanation of the demographics such as the fact that Japan has one of the oldest elderly populations in addition to having a big elderly population. Also, the low birth rate and cultural implications are also worth investigating. From the Japanese people I have spoken to, this is a big problem in Japan; hence, it should be reflected in the article on the aging of Japan.
 * Aging of Japan

Sources:

Wan He, Daniel Goodkind, and Paul Kowal U.S. Census Bureau, International Population Reports, P95/16-1, An Aging World: 2015, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, 2016

Muramatsu, N., & Akiyama, H. (2011). Japan: Super-aging society preparing for the future. The Gerontologist, 51(4), 425-432. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnr067

Tanaka, K., & Iwasawa, M. (2010). Aging in rural Japan--Limitations in the current social care policy. Japan Aging Soc Policy, 22(4), 394-406. doi: 10.1080/08959420.2010.507651

= Article Draft =

Government policies
These policies could prove useful for bringing women back into the workforce after having children, but they can also encourage the women who opt not to have children to join the workforce. The government has introduced other policies to address the growing elderly population as well, especially in rural areas. Many young people end up moving to the city in search of work, leaving behind a growing elderly population and a smaller work force to take care of them. Because of this, Japan's national government has tried to improve welfare services such as long-term care facilities and other services that can help families at home such as day-care or in-home nursing assistance. The Gold Plan was introduced in 1990 to improve these services and attempted to reduce the burden of care placed on families, followed by long-term care insurance (LTCI) in 2000. These plans have been upgraded and revised over the years to provide more local welfare services and institutions in rural areas, yet the rapidly increasing elderly population makes these efforts difficult to maintain.

Could not find find a suitable picture to reflect aging policy.

Comparisons with other countries
Historically, European countries have had the largest elderly populations by proportion as they became developed nations earlier, but many Asian and Latin American countries are quickly catching up. As of 2015, 22 of the 25 oldest countries are located in Europe, but Japan is currently the oldest country in the world and its rapidly aging population displays a trend that other Asian countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are expected to follow by 2050. As these developed nations continue to experience increased health care and lower fertility rates, the elderly population growth will continue to rise. In 1970-1975, only 19 countries had a fertility rate that can be considered below-replacement fertility and there were not any countries with exceedingly low fertility (<1.3 children); however, between 2000-2005, there were 65 countries with below-replacement fertility and 17 with exceedingly low fertility. While there has been a global trend of lower fertility and longer life expectancy, it is first evident in the more developed countries and occurs more rapidly in developing or recently developed countries. One of the most astounding aspects of Japan's elderly population, in particular, is that it is both fast-growing and has one of the highest life expectancies.

Could not find a suitable picture or graph to reflect data.

Already added my addition to the article