A better understanding of people’s well-being is central to developing better policies for improving people’s lives. With a life expectancy ranked one of the highest in the world, we are particularly curious about Japan.

The Japanese also tend to live better and healthier lives, even when compared to countries with similar levels of GDP per capita. Unlike Ireland, Japan has been coping with an increased elderly population for many years now. The 2015 census showed that more than a quarter of the population in japan were over 64 while in Ireland it is just over 13%.

However, in Japan, due to innovation and what appears to be a well-organised system, quality of life seems to be steady or increasing in comparison to other countries with similar levels of income. Japan performs well in a number of measures of well-being in the Better Life Index by the OECD. Japan ranks at the top in personal security. It ranks above the OECD average in income and wealth, education and skills, jobs and earnings, and social connections. It ranks below the average in terms of housing, civic engagement, subjective well-being, work-life balance and health status.

Money, while it cannot buy happiness, is an important means to achieving higher living standards. In Japan, the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is USD 27 323 a year, less than the OECD average of USD 29 016 a year. There is a considerable gap between the richest and poorest – the top 20% of the population earn more than six times as much as the bottom 20%. Yet Japanese people enjoy a good quality of life.

In terms of employment, 73% of people aged 15 to 64 in Japan have a paid job, above the OECD employment average of 66%, while in Ireland it is only 63%. Some 82% of men are in paid work, compared with 64% of women.

Good education and skills are important requisites for finding a job. In Ireland, 79% of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, above the OECD average of 76%. This is especially true of women, as only 76% of men have successfully completed secondary school compared with 82% of women.

Japan is a top-performing country in terms of the quality of its educational system. The average student scored 540 in reading literacy, math’s, and science in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

This score is much higher than the OECD average of 497, making Japan one of the strongest OECD countries in students’ skills. Although girls outperformed boys in many OECD countries, in Japan boys scored 1 point higher than girls on average.

In Ireland, in terms of the quality of our education system, the average student scored 516 in reading literacy, math’s, and science in the PISA study above the OECD average of 497. On average in Ireland, girls outperformed boys by 3 points, less than the average OECD gap of 8 points.

Health

Most OECD countries have enjoyed large gains in life expectancy over the past few decades, thanks to improvements in living conditions, public health interventions, and progress in medical care. Japan enjoys one of the highest life expectancies among OECD countries at 83 years, three years above the OECD average of 80 years, and one of the highest in the OECD. Higher life expectancy is generally associated with higher healthcare spending per person, although many other factors have an impact on life expectancy (such as living standards, lifestyle, education and environmental factors).

With Ireland heading into a steadily increasing elderly population, PharmaSupport believes that investing in well-being needs to start today. Our team is traveling to Tokyo to learn from the Japanese approach to health care. We are particularly interested in finding out how the private sector Pharmacy sector has contributed to health care overall.

Every country has room to improve. In this case, one striking finding from the data is how different the well-being outcomes are from countries with similar levels of GDP per capita. This shows that there are opportunities for improvement and benchmarking to capitalise on the learning to improve people’s lives. Reinforcing the idea that it is not all about the funding or the resources but more about how we use them.

We will report on our findings in future articles, keep an eye out.

Sayonara!