The Asian country that has seen its number of children fall for 44th year running

The crisis of declining birth rate in Japan continues to worsen, as new government figures showed the country’s child population has fallen for the 44th straight year to a new record low.

In Japan the total number of children aged under 15, including foreign nationals, dropped 350,000 to 13.66 million, according to the data released by the ministry of internal affairs and communications on Sunday.

Children made up just 11.1 per cent of Japan's total population, which was about 120.3 million in October 2024 following a new record fall in the country's population.

Japan's child population has been falling continuously since 1982, Japan Today reported. At least 3.14 million children are aged between 12 to 14, while just 2.2 million are in the group 0 to 2 years.

The are 6.99 million boys and 6.66 million girls in Japan.

Japan has the second-lowest ratio of children to adults among the 37 nations with a population of at least 40 million, behind South Korea on just 10.6 per cent, according to UN data.

In February, the Japanese government announced that the number of babies born in the country fell to a record low of 720,988 in 2024 – a ninth consecutive year of decline.

Births were down 5 per cent in a year, despite a range of steps unveiled in 2023 by former prime minister Fumio Kishida to boost childbearing, while a record number of 1.62 million deaths meant that more than two people died for every new baby born.

The decline in Japan’s population has been raising alarm bells for years, amid concerns over how a shrinking workforce will impact the country’s economy and could even threaten national security.

One Japanese expert on demographic trends has warned that if the birth rate continues its current rate of decline, the nation will be left with only one child under the age of 14 by January 2720.

The latest figures released in April showed the overall population had fallen for the 14th straight year and marked the largest fall on record since the government began collecting comparable data in 1950.

The number of people aged 75 or above grew by 700,000 to 20,777,000, accounting for a record 16.8 per cent of the entire population, the government said. About 29.3 per cent of Japan's population were made up of people aged 65 or above, according to reports.

One reason for Japan's birth rate decline was that fewer marriages have taken place in recent years, stemming in part from the Covid-19 pandemic, said Takumi Fujinami, an economist at the Japan Research Institute.

Although the number of marriages edged up 2.2 per cent to 499,999 in 2024, that came only after steep declines, such as a plunge of 12.7 per cent in 2020.

"The impact could linger on in 2025 as well," Mr Fujinami told Reuters.