Diapers are for adults

Change your mindset. If you associate diapers with babies, get used to the idea that no, given what's coming, their target market is the elderly. That's what can be deduced after the Japanese diaper manufacturer Oji Holdings announced that it is discontinuing production of baby diapers to focus on the adult market.

This decision is due to the fact that sales of adult diapers have been outpacing baby diapers in Japan for more than a decade.

Oji Holdings manufactured 700 million children's diapers in 2001; it now makes only 400 million. In contrast, the adult diaper market is growing steadily, with an estimated value of 300 billion yen (US$2 billion).

The drop in the birth rate last year was 5.1% compared to 2022, which is the lowest number of births recorded in Japan since the 19th century.

Japan's birth rate crisis is a population crisisThe proportion of people over 80 years of age will exceed 10% for the first time in 2023. In 2023, the proportion of people over 80 years of age exceeded 10% for the first time.

The poor approach to Japanese government policies to improve these imbalances have led to the problem, far from decreasing, it is increasing year after year.. Subsidies to young couples to have children do not work, due in part to the fact that marriages continue to decline in an eminently macho society, where women must sacrifice their professional careers to have children and where men do not usually help in raising children.

Nearly 30 % of the Japanese population is 65 years of age or older.

But this problem is endemic throughout industrialized Asia, South Korea has an even bigger problemHong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and China, which saw its population fall for the second consecutive year in 2023, are in the same situation.

And in the West, things are not looking any better, with Italy and Spain with serious birth rate problems. We'll see if here too, soon, we will no longer see baby diapers on supermarket shelves and in their place, adult diapers will stand out.

Cover photo by Jaddy Liu