Japan’s population is likely to decline (image credits: The Asahi Shimbun)

Birth rates decline, death rates escalate in Japan

Japan’s population is likely to decline, as the government survey on Friday released the number of babies born in 2018 hit the lowest with 918,387 newborns, falling 27,668 from birth rates in 2017 while the number of deaths jumped from 22,085 to 1,362,482 people.

Since the first statistic data in 1899 were collected, 2018 could be the worst year for the country’s population as the data showed the largest margin of decline at 444,085, based on the gap of birth rates and mortalities rate.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s goals to achieve 1.8 points on fertility rate by March 2026 seems to face obstacles. According to the data, in 2018, Japanese women‘s fertility rates - the average number of children a woman will give birth to in her lifetime, decreased at 0.01point from 1.42 point in 2017.

Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare predicts the number of babies born in Japan will continue to decrease.

Among 47 prefectures in Japan, only Okinawa had higher birth rate than death with 1.89 points, followed by Shimane’s 1.74 and Miyazaki’s 1.72, while the capital city of Japan, Tokyo became the lowest with 1.20 points.

The ministry said a promotion to encourage people to have children is necessary. They would set up an environment where everyone who wants to have children could have children and raise them at ease.

There are a lot of reasons behind the falling number of birth rates in Japan. The ministry officials mentioned economic conditions and difficulties to manage work and children at the same time are the major reasons.

Having second child is also becoming a problem for Japanese family, 73.5 percent respondent in a recent survey by a Japanese group helping with child raising, said they feel it is hard to have second child. Economic factor became the mainly reason for Japanese parents unwilling to have more than one child, according to 1more Baby Oendan online survey in late May.

Since 2012 only fewer people were getting married, the lowest number was 586,438 couples tied the knot in 2018 while the divorce cases decrease to 3,929 points.

As elderly citizens in Japan increase, people aged 65 or over reached 124.22 which was about 28 percent of the populations.

According to the government survey, cancer is the major reason of death with 27.4 percent, followed by heart disease at 15.3 percent and natural causes at 8.0 percent. The number of suicide were 1.5 percent or around 20,032 people ended their own life.

Source: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201906100037.html