The Death of Birth — Our Dismal Fertility Rates

According to research, appearing in the March issue of the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, robotic dogs may prove to be as effective as real dogs, when it comes to assuaging the loneliness of the elderly.

Readers of The Death of Birth may have seen this post on robotics, in which it was reported that companies in Japan are leading the way in developing robots for both service and companionship. It should come as no surprise that Japan is at the forefront of this field, partly because the nation is so advanced technologically but also because it is aging so severely as a result of its decades-long anemic fertility rates.

According to this article,

To test whether residents responded better to Sparky, a trained therapy dog, or the Sony-made robot dog, researchers divided 38 nursing home residents into three groups at a trio of long-term care facilities in St. Louis.

Though the results are not conclusive, it seems that, once they warmed up to the mechanical pooch, residents found as much comfort in its company as in the company of a real dog.

With a dearth of children in much of the developed world, the elderly may at times need to find companionship in robots. Now if we can only get the robots to pay the necessary taxes to support us in our elder years.

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