Japan’s Births Decline to Record Low for 10th Straight Year

Tokyo, Feb. 26 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s annual number of births fell to 705,809 in 2025, marking a preliminary record low for the 10th consecutive year, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said Thursday. According to the latest preliminary report, births decreased by 15,179, or 2.1 pct, from the previous year, compared with declines of around 5 pct in 2022-2024. By prefecture, only Tokyo and the central prefecture of Ishikawa reported an increase in births from the previous year. The government spends 3.6 trillion yen annually to address the decline in births, which is progressing more than 15 years earlier than projections made by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. “With no end in sight for the decline in births, we take the situation seriously,” a ministry official said. The preliminary figure includes births to foreigners living in Japan and Japanese nationals overseas. Final figures will count only births to Japanese nationals in Japan, likely resulting in an even lower number. The annual number of Japanese births peaked at about 2.69 million in 1949 and has been on a downward trend since around 1975, falling below 1 million in 2016. In 2024, the number came to 686,173, the lowest since statistics began in 1899. Meanwhile, the number of marriages in 2025 rose 1.1 pct, or 5,657 couples, from the previous year to 505,656, up for the second straight year. The figure, however, was the third lowest since the end of World War II and about half of the record high of roughly 1.09 million pairings recorded in 1972. The number of divorces fell to 182,969. Deaths totaled 1,605,654, down for the first time in five years. The natural population decline, defined as deaths exceeding births, came to 899,845, the largest preliminary figure ever recorded, highlighting the advancing population shrinkage. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]