Supplemental material for Prof. Narita's class

In case you aren't familiar with the professor's research (from NYT via Gelman):

     A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean?

    In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.

    “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” he said during one online news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was a code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.

...

Some surveys in Japan have indicated that a majority of the public supports legalizing voluntary euthanasia. But Mr. Narita’s reference to a mandatory practice spooks ethicists.

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