TOKYO: The number of babies born in Japan totaled 758,631 in 2023, hitting a record low for the eighth straight year and representing half the figure of some 1.5 million logged in 1983, a preliminary health ministry report showed Tuesday.

The 2023 figure is down by 41,097, or 5.1 percent, from the previous year’s preliminary total of 799,728.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of marriages in 2020 fell to the lowest since the end of World War II in 1945, and the figure sank even lower in 2021. This may have played a part in the decline in the number of births last year.

“People tend to get married and give births later in life, and in addition to this, the coronavirus may have affected marriages and births,” an official of the health ministry said.

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimated in 2023 that Japan’s population would fall below 100 million in 2056 and to 87 million in 2070.

Earlier this month, the government adopted a bill to bolster measures to tackle the number of births falling at a pace faster than the government expected.

The bill includes plans to expand child benefits and child-rearing leave allowances. The government plans to boost funds for these measures to an annual 3.6 trillion yen by fiscal 2028.

The annual number of newborns stood around 2.7 million during the first baby boom between 1947 and 1949 and around 2.1 million during the second baby boom between 1971 and 1974. The number fell below one million in 2016, below 900,000 in 2019 and below 800,000 in 2022.

In 2023, the number of marriages fell by some 30,000 from the previous year to a postwar low of 489,281.

The number of deaths came to a record 1,590,503, up for the third straight year. The country’s natural population decline, or the number of deaths minus that of births, came to 831,872. It is the 17th straight year of natural population decline and the biggest fall ever.

The preliminary number of newborns includes the number of babies that were born to foreign residents in Japan and Japanese living abroad. A revised figure to be announced later on will be even lower because it only counts Japanese nationals living in Japan.

JIJI Press