In 2024, 30,000 solitary people died at home in Japan within half a year

On August 28, 2024, the preliminary statistical data released by the National Police Agency of Japan is shocking. In the first half of this year, there were actually 37,227 solitary people who died at home in Japan. Among them, 28,330 were people over 65 years old, accounting for about 76%.

In terms of age distribution, the number of “lonely deaths” among people over 85 years old is the highest, at 7,498, while the number of people under 30 is the lowest, only 473, showing a trend that the older the age, the more “lonely deaths”. In terms of gender, there are about 25,600 men and 11,600 women. The situation of male solitary people is more severe. Geographically, the metropolitan area including Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, Chiba Prefecture and Saitama Prefecture, as well as Osaka, the phenomenon of “lonely death” is particularly serious. Among them, Tokyo has the largest number, reaching 4,786.

In recent years, Japan's single rate has been continuously rising, and the problem of population aging has been continuously aggravated, which has led to an increasing number of solitary people dying at home. In order to take effective measures to prevent and deal with this problem, the National Police Agency of Japan began to count the number of deaths of solitary people, that is, the number of “lonely deaths” this year.

As ***yzed by Japan's Asahi Shimbun, with the increase in the single population and changes in the social environment, people's living difficulties and *** problems have become prominent, leading to an aggravation of the phenomenon of “lonely death”. In April this year, Japan began to implement the “Law on Promoting Countermeasures against Loneliness and Isolation” to alleviate the increasingly serious loneliness problem. However, to truly solve this social problem requires the joint efforts of the government, all sectors of society and individuals to provide more care and support for solitary people and improve relevant guarantee systems and service measures to reduce the occurrence of such tragedies.