Japan births hit record low

The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to its lowest level since records began 125 years ago, as the country’s demographic crisis deepened and government efforts to reverse the decline continued to falter.

According to preliminary government figures released Thursday, Japan recorded 720,988 births in 2024.

This marks the ninth consecutive year of decline. Financial and other government incentives aimed at encouraging married couples to have more children appear to have had little effect.

The 2024 figure represents a 5% drop from the previous year and is the lowest since records began in 1899, during Japan’s Meiji era.

Coupled with a record 1.6 million deaths last year, the figures mean Japan’s population shrank by roughly 900,000 people, excluding migration figures.

In 2023, Japan’s then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that the country was on the brink of “whether we can continue to function as a society” because of its shrinking and aging population.

Japan’s demographics are increasingly skewed, with a rapidly dwindling pool of young people left to support the health and social security costs of a country with massive public debt. Roughly 30% of the population is over 65.

Government bodies have taken increasingly radical measures to try to reverse the decline, including an experiment by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to allow employees to work four-day weeks.

Japan’s falling birth rate stands in contrast to South Korea, which on Wednesday reported its fertility rate had risen for the first time in nine years.

Some demographers had hoped for a post-pandemic baby boom in Japan, but the decline in births has continued unabated.

A 2011 study by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research did not expect the number of births to fall to 720,000 until 2039.