Are Megacities in East Asia Demographic Black Holes

摘要

Tokyo's power to attract people from other areas of Japan seems to have increased lately. On the other hand, Tokyo is the least fertile region in Japan. Nowadays, Tokyo is absorbing reproductive young people from the whole of Japan. Several countries in East Asia including Japan, Korea and China, have entered the aging society. Megacities in these countries, however, have grown during this period. They show the lowest fertility rate and the biggest net migration increase within each country. They absorb a large population from the whole country and exploit its biogeneous energy and lower its fertility. Megacities constitute national centers of centripetal population movements in each country. We, therefore, called these cities "Demographic black holes", due to their power of attracting young people and their dark future. We shall try to show the mechanism of "Demographic Black hole" by using time- spatial changes of TFR, Child-women ratio and other demographic indices in Japan and Korea.