Japan’s birth rate dropped to its lowest in 125 years

Even after then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged up to 3.6 trillion yen (~$24 billion) annually to combat declining birth rates last year, Japan’s population problem is still getting worse.

Preliminary data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, published Thursday, found that there were just 720,988 births in Japan in 2024 — a 5% decline from the year before and the lowest figure since records began in 1899 — marking a continuation of the birth slump trend that’s being observed the world over. But Japan’s baby bust only appears to be escalating: per a 2011 study cited by the Financial Times, experts had only anticipated births to fall to ~720,000 in 2039. 

Alongside the number of deaths reaching a new high of ~1.62 million, this puts Japan’s natural population loss at nearly 900,000 people, ensuring that Japan will continue to wrestle with a rapidly graying population for years to come. In September, it was reported that almost one-third of the Japanese population was over 65 years old.

Family planning

Despite government efforts to encourage couples to have children — including introducing a four-day workweek in Tokyo and offering 1 million yen ($7,600) per child to families who moved out of the city — Japan has struggled to convince citizens to have kids, with births declining for nine consecutive years.

However, Japanese policymakers might take some hope from their neighbors, South Korea, the country that’s had the world’s lowest fertility rate since 2013. Government officials reported Wednesday that its fertility rate actually rose for the first time in nine years, as its policy push starts to take effect.

Dark horse... Japan saw its biggest single-year decline in births (down 25%) in 1966, the year of the hinoe-uma (Fire Horse) in the Chinese zodiac, due to superstitions about women born in this year — and, coming in hot as literally the last thing the Japanese government needs, the next Fire Horse year is in 2026.