Births dropped by 41,227, or 5.7 per cent, from the previous year. It was only two years ago, in 2022, that the figure fell below the 800,000 birth threshold.
A ministry official said the situation was “critical” as “multiple complex factors are preventing individuals from fulfilling their hopes of marriage and starting families,” The Asahi newspaper reported.
The country’s demographic crisis is advancing 15 years ahead of experts’ predictions, who had forecast around 755,000 births for 2024, and did not anticipate that births would fall below 690,000 until 2039.
Additionally, Japan’s total fertility rate – the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – dropped to a historic low of 1.15, down from 1.20 the previous year, underscoring the country’s ongoing trend of delayed marriage and childbirth.
Both the birth and fertility rates have decreased for nine consecutive years. The figures exclude foreign nationals born in Japan and Japanese born outside the country.
Japan also saw a record high of 1,605,298 deaths in 2024, a 1.9 per cent increase from the previous year. This led to a population loss of 919,237 people, marking the 18th consecutive year of decline and the largest recorded.
