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.

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