Diaper change: Japan’s aging society is transforming the baby care business
CNN
The world’s population is getting older in what the United Nations calls an “irreversible global trend,” driven by longer lives and smaller families.
The world’s population is getting older in what the United Nations calls an “irreversible global trend,” driven by longer lives and smaller families. The number of people aged 65 and older is expected to more than double to 1.6 billion globally by 2050, according to a UN report published last year. In Japan, this change is threatening one of the world’s largest economies as the percentage of older people grows and fewer couples have children. In early June, the country said the number of babies born fell for the eighth straight year, hitting a record low of 727,277 births in 2023 since Japan started compiling data more than 120 years ago. A few months earlier, Japan said that one in 10 people were aged 80 or older, making it the oldest country in the world. Last year, almost 30% of the Japanese population was 65 or older. In June 2023, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled a multi-billion dollar package of measures to encourage families to have more children. Japan is trying to tackle a demographic crisis that could impact pension funding and health care as the workforce shrinks and demand from the aging population surges.
Price hikes picked up speed for US-based businesses toward the end of last year, a potential signal that inflation has yet to peak and prices could soon rise faster for consumers.
Trump is threatening to take “strong action” against Iran just after capturing the leader of Venezuela. His administration is criminally investigating the chair of the Federal Reserve and is taking a scorched-earth approach on affordability by threatening key profit drivers for banks and institutional investors.
Perhaps no data point better encapsulates the American economy right now than this nugget from Delta’s quarterly earnings:
China recorded the world’s biggest ever trade surplus in 2025, as well as a 20% jump from 2024, capping off a year in which the world’s largest manufacturer defied US trade pressure by ramping up exports to other global markets.
Saks Global, the parent company of luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, filed for bankruptcy protection late Tuesday, according to court documents filed in US Bankruptcy Court in Houston, Texas.
China on Wednesday reported a strong export run in 2025 with a record surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion, as producers braced for three more years of a Trump administration set on slowing the production powerhouse by shifting US orders to other markets.
Microsoft says it will ask to pay higher electricity bills in areas where it’s building data centers, in an effort to prevent electricity prices for local residents from rising in those areas. The move is part of a broader plan to address rising prices and other concerns sparked by the tech industry’s massive buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure across the United States.
US consumer prices rose 2.7% annually in December, closing out a year that saw slight progress on inflation but continued affordability concerns for many Americans.
The BBC is taking steps to have Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against it dismissed, a court document showed.
Amazon executives laid out their vision for Alexa’s future in an interview with CNN at the CES tech convention, where the company launched a new Alexa website and updates to other Amazon products.
After cutting interest rates three times in a row last year, the Federal Reserve indicated last month it probably won’t lower interest rates again for a while. A months-long pause, cemented by key economic data released Friday, may indeed be the best-case scenario for the world’s largest economy.
What is Corporate America so afraid of?
President Donald Trump wants to juice the economy with dramatically lower interest rates, to take credit for a booming stock market and, perhaps most of all, for his handpicked Fed chair to get off the stage.