Japan’s population crisis is accelerating, with the number of nationals falling by more than 800,000 in the past year – echoing similar trends seen in other East Asian countries.
As of January 1 this year, Japan’s total population stood at 125.4 million, including both Japanese and foreign residents, according to data released on Wednesday by Japan’s internal affairs ministry. The number of foreign residents rose by nearly 289,500 compared to the previous year – a significant increase of more than 10%.
But the number of Japanese residents shrank by 800,523, marking the 14th consecutive year of contraction since a peak in 2009, said the ministry.
And for the first time, all prefectures across the country saw a decrease in the number of Japanese nationals, a ministry spokesperson told CNN.
However, due to the rise in foreign residents, the capital Tokyo saw a slight increase in overall population of all residents regardless of nationality.
The number of deaths last year also hit another record high, with 1.56 million recorded – compared to less than half the number of births recorded, just 771,801 newborns, according to the ministry.
Deaths have outpaced births in Japan for more than a decade, posing a growing problem for leaders of the world’s third-largest economy. They now face a ballooning elderly population, along with a shrinking workforce to fund pensions and health care as demand from the aging population surges.
Japan’s population has been in steady decline since its economic boom of the 1980s, with a fertility rate of 1.3 – far below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population, in the absence of immigration.
The country also has one of the highest life expectancies in the world; in 2020, nearly one in 1,500 people in Japan were age 100 or older, according to government data.
Nearby, China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan are experiencing similar crises, struggling to encourage young people to have more children, in the face of rising living costs and social discontent.
Wow who would’ve thought that in a work-centric society that encourages wage-slaving, the women wouldn’t have as many children. Huh, crazy.
Who knew that when we can’t pay for things, and have no available time, that we would stop having children. The solution? Give the rich more tax breaks!
I do think it really ally goes back to the degeneration of living conditions of the middle class.
And this will be corrected for eventually.
Any society which doesn’t have a good TFR will eventually be replaced by one that does.
Yep, the near non existent middle class is struggling. Instead of fighting for better rights, people would rather fight for virtue signaling and drowning their sorrows with doom scrolling. My fear is that the people won’t wake up.
Indeed
I have a daughter and I respect the rights of women. I do not think they should be exiled from the workforce by any stretch of the imagination, but to save the total fertility rate, I think it would make sense to come up with new policies designed to incentivize them becoming mothers, and to give such benefits that taking time off of work for the first 6-7 years of a child’s life is not a ding on their careers.
Honestly, we need to fix the fertility crisis as soon as possible.
I don’t think it’s just women who don’t want kids honestly. Guys and Girls alike can’t find the time or money for having kids. If a guy spends 80% of his time working, and now the girl needs time off, he will have to work 160% of his day to compensate. I’d say I’m right wing, but man do the fucking rich need to be taxed like crazy.
That is true - a lot of men would rather play video games than be fathers…
Really, spending your life playing video games and shitposting on social media is being sucked into a sort of matrix.
