Most people know that the US and Japan are the worlds two biggest economies, respectively. How do they compare in major economic indicators?
A2: Japan’s 2004 population registered 127,333 million, about half of the US population of 293,028 million. Owing to land mass (Japan has 378 million km2) compared to the US (with9.8 billion km2), Japan is far more densely-populated — there are 336 people per km2 compared to just 29 Americans per km2. Japan’s real GDP in 2004 was 3.582 trillion Yen (calculated at an exchange rate of 115.933), while that of the US was $10.99 trillion. Japan’s economic growth rate in 2004 was 2.7% compared to 3.1% in the US. By Japanese standards, unemployment has been relatively high since the collapse of the “bubble economy” in the mid-1990s — hitting a post-war joblessness high of 5.3% in 2004, compared to 6.0% in the US. Life expectancy in 2004 for Japanese males was 77.74 for males and 84.51 for females. By contrast, American men live on average to the age of 74.63, while women live to the age of 80.36.
