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The number of births in Japan in 2024 is likely to fall under 700,000 for the first time after government data showed Tuesday that the figure in the first half fell 6.3 percent from a year earlier to 329,998.
The figure for the first six months of this year, which does not include foreigners, reflects the birth rate remaining at record lows in the past years, as more people choose not to marry or delay marriage and having children until later in life.
The number of deaths in the first half increased 1.8 percent from the same period last year to 800,274, and the natural decrease, subtracted from the number of births, stood at 470,276, according to the data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
With its population declining for the 15th consecutive year in 2023, Japan faces labor shortages that threaten the sustainability of social security systems, such as health care and pensions, while local government services could collapse.
The government seeks to raise the birth rate by expanding child care allowances and providing benefits for taking parental leave, among other measures, as it considers the period up until the early 2030s the "last chance" to reverse the birthrate crisis.
The comparable number of births in the first half of 2023 was 352,240, with a full-year total of 727,277.
Preliminary data released by the ministry in August showed that the number of babies born in Japan, including to foreigners, as well as to Japanese citizens residing overseas, fell 5.7 percent from a year earlier to 350,074 in the January to June period.
© KYODO
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sakurasuki
With long work hours and employee being punished for taking parental leave, Japan still wondering why number of babies declined?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/japan-has-some-of-the-longest-working-hours-in-the-world-its-trying-to-change.html
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https://www.reuters.com/article/world/japan-parental-leave-case-puts-spotlight-on-workers-rights-idUSKCN1VV0QD/
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ebisen
Japan is currently both aged and overpopulated and that's the reason it can't sustain the society into an improved birth rate. When was the last time you saw someone giving up his or her seat to a pregnant lady, despite the pendant she's wearing informing everyone about? Almost never? Yes, extrapolate that to the rest of the child bearing and rearing period, and that's about the help you'll ever get.
"Excluding foreigners" - luckily they don't exclude Half's, so I did my part. Time to include foreigners better perhaps?
factchecker
Fewer humans on the planet is a good thing.
garymalmgren
This is not a problem for Japan alone.
ALL developed countries (Australia is a 1.5 live births per woman) and most developing countries (India etc) are facing a dramatic population decline and not one has reversed it.
Any theory of why Japan is facing this problem and how it should deal with it should be weighed against what we see in other countries.
Korea has a low birth rate along with active outward immigration. Yet those Koreans who settle in a new country emulate the low birth rate trend at home.
Every trick in the book has been tried and failed.
Countries that have a reasonable population growth are actually achieving that by inward immigration. That however is just a gap filling fix.
virusrex
The government: We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
JeffLee
That's not true. Canada isn't. The population grew 3.2 percent last year, faster than just about any nation on earth. I've watched the population double in my lifetime. And that's causing a series of intractable crises: very limited access to an overburdened healthcare system, overcrowded public schools, housing crisis affecting everyone but the very rich, etc., strained infrasture for which there are few funds or resources for upgrades.
Japan, with its gradually declilning population, has no such crises. Affordable housing, easily available healthcare when and where you need it, constantly improving infrastructure and environment.
It's a myth that developed countries need to pump up their populations to "susutain" themselves. It's a theory, and one that was constructed in the interests of the rich and powerful. The real-world reality is very different. Take a look also at UK and Germany. Japan would create lots more problems than it solves with large-scale immigration.
ian
Yeah but what's the birthrate
Rakuraku
garymalmgrenToday 07:36 am JST
This is not a problem for Japan alone.
Of course good to have support for people who want to have kids but it is unlikely to change much.
We just need to find ways to live with aging societies. Easier said than done though.
Aly Rustom
Preliminary data released by the ministry in August showed that the number of babies born in Japan, including to foreigners, as well as to Japanese citizens residing overseas, fell 5.7 percent from a year earlier to 350,074 in the January to June period.
So this number includes foreign babies and children born to Japanese overseas who may or may not reside in Japan in the future.
What is the number of Japanese children born in Japan during that time period?
Mr Kipling
One day its doom and gloom with no babies, next it is robots and AI will solve all our problems.
Which is it?
Fighto!
Interesting figures.
Could it be that the Japanese people are consciously choosing to depopulate their (insanely overcrowded) nation? Perhaps they are sick of the abject misery of catching public transport, trying to find childcare facilities, make reservations for hotels and restaurants on holidays etc?
A stabilised population of around 80 million is probably what they are trying to achieve - with the resultant free space, cleaner nature, ease of getting jobs, university entry and apartments, hospital beds and seats on trains. Time will tell!
carpslidy
That's a big drop, I hope more people will choose to have children
There is nothing better in life than being a parent
garymalmgren
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garymalmgren
Geeter Mckluskie
Of course it's down. A smaller population is going to yield fewer children. The question is whether or not an increase in population is prudent considering the fact that all forecasts point to AI and mass-automation rendering 50% or more of current jobs obsolete within the next 2 decades. Also worthy of consideration is the fact that Japan is surrounded by hostile neighbors and only has around 35% self-sufficiency in terms of its own food production. At this point in Japan's history a reduction in population seems the prudent way to go. What's required is an economic shift that doesn't rely on unsustainable population growth.
Geeter Mckluskie
AI and robots will have created problems that require fewer babies. That's not necessarily doom and gloom...not if the population levels out to an optimal number that dovetails with the technology that will render 50% of current jobs obsolete within the next 2 decades.
dobre vam zajebava
I am not surprised at all.
just look around you and you will get it too,no uni degree or some experts are needed...
Tokyo Guy
"Honey, I'd love to get down with it and have a child, but I have to go drinking with the boys and the section chief, and then I have to write a report for the very same section chief, and he needs it by 9AM and we'll be out drinking until at least 1 AM, so I'll probably just go back to the office and sleep under the desk for a couple of hours. Sorry, you know how it goes. What? A divorce? Why on earth would you want to do that?"
Michael
It would be interesting to see what the growth in immigrants birth rate is by comparison
kohakuebisu
Yes, it is. The number dropping is not the story, it's been a trend for a long time, it's the size of this drop.
The current population of JHS kids is 3.17 million. 1.05m a year. The population of elementary kids is 6.05m, which I'll call a million a year. 330,000 in six months is cumulative fall of a third in six years. Imagine every child-related business, schools, etc. losing 1/3 of their demand. This is huge. Its baked in university demand for 18 year olds in 2042, graduate job seekers in 2046....
fwiw, I blame this on Covid as much as the recent inflation.
Lindsay
This trend of declining births has been going on for twenty years or more and will still continue into the future but the government’s only solution is to promote more births. They have to change their economic strategies to compensate for a shrinking population and workforce. The big one is the pension. The structure is only viable with a demographic ratios of when they created it. Now, with many more retirees and much fewer younger people to support the scam it is destined to fail. It’s already failed but the system will be totally destitute within a few decades. They’ll have the younger generation paying up to 50% of their salaries to pay the pension for the previous generation. On which they’ll only get 20% back for their pension if they are lucky.
Bringing in cheap foreign labor doesn’t work in a xenophobic culture. Japan needs a skilled workforce. The future for Japan doesn’t look very rosy.
rainyday
There is nothing "gradual" about the decline. In 2015 there were more than a million births. Now we are already under 700,000, which means more than a 30% drop in just 9 years, with the rate of decrease going up every year.
Yes, Japan doesn't have the same type of crisis as Canada does, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a crisis of its own.
These are things that exist now in Japan. Its questionable whether this will continue to be the case if the birthrate continues to crash. In terms of housing obviously more of it will be empty, but it doesn't mean that it will continue to be relatively affordable. Much of rural Japan is likely to simply be abandoned, meaning most of its housing stock will cease to exist. That will just fuel greater concentration in urban areas where services still exist, pushing up prices in those areas.
And I don't see how Japan's easily available healthcare (and Japan is way better than Canada in that regard) is going to be sustainable under the twin strains of immense numbers of elderly people needing care on the one hand, and not enough people to work as nurses, doctors, pharmacists, etc on the other. Robots and AI are only going to get you so far.
kohakuebisu
The pension scheme is not pay as you go. It has a fund, pretty much the world's largest at 1.6 trillion USD, that made money last year. It is not a "scam" or a "Ponzi". That is factually incorrect. Other parts of the government's finances are likely to be more problematic. A scam will be pay as you go systems that suddenly start deciding that after paying into a system all your life to fund other people's pensions from 65, you will not get yours till you are 70.
The number of old people in Japan will start going down sometime around 2035 to 2040. Its hard to know when because we do not know what will happen with life expectancy. There are positive (less smoking, more cures) and negative (more meat, more sedentary lifestyle) trends. The basic problem with Japan's demographics is to pay for the boomers until they inevitably die, mostly in the form of health care for them. Most of the "boomers retiring" time bomb in Japan has already gone off. I would be more concerned about Europe, where people get much larger pensions, well over double many Japanese, with fewer young people and no investment fund to support them.
grund
What the article doesn't mention is that compared to other countries the Japanese birthrate is not all that bad. Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Germany, Italy, and many other developed countries have just as low or lower numbers.
rainyday
Uh, no. Even compared to other countries, Japan's birthrate is extremely low.
Japan ranks #212 out of 227 jurisdictions in terms of Total Fertility Rate:
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/
The fact that South Korea, Italy and a small handful of countries are a bit lower than Japan doesn't even remotely mean that Japan's birthrate "is not all that bad."