Society

77% of Japanese town and village assembly members are elderly, and only 10% are female

Mar 02 (Japan Times) - Of the 10,956 town and village assembly members in Japan, 8,442, or 77.1 percent, were aged 60 or over as of July 1 last year, a survey showed Thursday.

The survey by the national association of town and village assembly chairs covered 927 such assemblies nationwide.

The average age of all town and village assembly members stood at 64.2, up 0.7 from a year before, according to the survey.

The youngest was Daisuke Nakao, 26, at the assembly of the town of Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture, while the oldest was Haruo Hanai, 91, at the assembly of the village of Yahiko, Niigata Prefecture.

Female assembly members numbered 1,100 â€” only 10.0 percent of the total, although the proportion had inched up by 0.1 percentage point.

The survey also found that 305 assemblies had no female members.

Monthly pay for town and village assembly members averaged Â¥214,533.

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