While many nations have aging populations, Japans demographic crisis is truly dire, with

forecasts showing that 40 percent of the population will have been 65 and over in 2055.【M1】______ Some of the consequences have been long foreseen, like deflation: as more Japanese retire and live off their savings, they spend more, further depressing Japans anemic levels of domestic【M2】______ consumption. So a less anticipated outcome has been the【M3】______ appearance of generational inequalities. These disparities manifest itself in many ways. There are【M4】______ corporations that hire all too many young people for low-paying jobs—in effect, forcing them to shoulder the costs of preserving cushier jobs to older employees. Others point to【M5】______ an underfinanced pension system so skewed in the favor of【M6】______ older Japanese that many younger workers simply refuse to pay; a "silver democracy" that spends far more on the elderly than education and child care—an issue that is familiar to【M7】______ Americans; and outdated hiring practices that have created a new "lost generation" of disenfranchised youths. Nagisa Inoue, a senior at Tokyos Meiji University, said she was considering paying for a fifth year at her university rather than graduate without a job, an outcome that in Japans rigid【M8】______ job market might permanently taint her chances of ever getting a higher-paying corporate job. That is why Japanese【M9】______ companies, even when they do offer stable, regular jobs, prefer to give them only to new graduates, which are seen as the【M10】______ more malleable candidates for molding into Japans corporate culture.

【M1】