Experts in Japan want the government to take urgent steps to arrest the falling birth rate.
The falling birth rate in Japan prompted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's advisor to issue a dire warning. Masako Mori said the country will "disappear" if the fall in birth rate is not arrested.
Here are five points on Japan's population decline:
- Japan's birth rate is one of the lowest in the world. In 2021, the fertility rate, which indicates the number of children a woman will have during her lifetime, fell to 1.30, according to The Diplomat. It is worryingly low, below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population, in the absence of immigration.
- The island nation's life expectancy is among the highest in the world, with 1 in 1,500 over 100 years old. The proportion of people 65 or over rose to more than 29 per cent.
- Last year, about twice as many people died as were born in Japan, with fewer than 800,000 births and about 1.58 million deaths.
- The population has fallen to 124.6 million (12.4 crore) from a peak of just over 128 (12.8 crore) million reached in 2008, and the pace of decline is increasing.
- According to CNN, Japan's high cost of living, limited space and lack of child care support in cities make it difficult to raise children, and that is why fewer couples are having kids.
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