4.6 β’ 3.5K Ratings
ποΈ 15 July 2023
β±οΈ 9 minutes
ποΈ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast. |
0:05.0 | We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life. |
0:09.0 | And I'm Charlotte McDonald. |
0:12.0 | This week, we're investigating a claim that's been doing the rounds for quite some time. |
0:17.0 | More adult nappies are sold in Japan than baby ones. |
0:22.0 | It's appeared in various forms in academic papers, newspaper headlines and very much fits in with the perception of Japan |
0:29.0 | as an aging society where people are just not having children. |
0:33.0 | But how to is it that nappies or diapers made for adults are outselling those for babies? |
0:39.0 | Our reporter, Isabelle Gough, has been looking into it. |
0:42.0 | Is about what you found. |
0:44.0 | Well, Charlotte, the first article I could find connected to this claim was from the Atlantic in 2013. |
0:50.0 | Crucially, though, this article did not state that adult nappies were outselling baby ones, |
0:55.0 | rather that they would by 2020. |
0:58.0 | The Atlantic article itself referred to another article in the NICA newspaper, |
1:03.0 | which had published a joint statement from three major nappy companies in Japan predicting this sales trend. |
1:09.0 | Okay, well, where else can the claim be sourced? |
1:12.0 | I managed to track this claim down to a tweet from Pew Research Centre Senior Demographer Conrad Hackett. |
1:18.0 | On the 27th of November 2014, he tweeted a graphic illustrating Japan's aging population |
1:24.0 | and captioned it, adult diapers are outselling infant diapers in Japan. |
1:29.0 | I contacted Pew and asked him to direct me to the report. |
1:33.0 | They linked me to a fact sheet entitled, Six Facts About Japan's Downbeat Economy. |
1:38.0 | This fact sheet made no mention of nappies. |
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