Demography and deathcare in a changing East Asia

Ear to Asia

As East Asian countries like Japan, China and South Korea experience rapid population ageing due to declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy, the demographic shift in the land of the living is having a parallel impact on what happens after life. Deathcare -- which encompasses post-death services, products, policy, and governance -- is changing too. Rapid urbanisation has disrupted long-observed burial practices and post-death rituals, while smaller family sizes and a jump in one-person households has put pressure on age-old East Asian traditions that centre the handling or the honouring of the dead in the family home. And just as new business models and services are emerging to meet the living needs of greying populations in East Asia, deathcare too has had to innovate, with new technologies and digital solutions aimed at both disposal and memorialisation of the dead. Anthropologists Dr Hannah Gould from the University of Melbourne and Professor Andrew Kipnis from The Chinese University of Hong Kong join Ear to Asia host Sami Shah to explain how demography in the region is reshaping deathcare. An Asia Institute podcast. Produced and edited by profactual.com. Music by audionautix.com.