By RYUICHI HISANAGA/ Staff Writer
March 25, 2021 at 18:35 JST
A 4-day-old baby wears a face shield for newborns in May 2020. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Japan's births plummeted 14.6 percent from a year earlier to 63,742 in January, the biggest drop since 2000, according to the health ministry.
Preliminary figures of newborns released by the ministry include the number of non-Japanese born in the country and Japanese born overseas.
The latest figures reflect the trend of putting off having children amid the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns about a further drop in the birthrate.
The number of births in January fell by 10,930 from the 74,672 recorded a year ago. The 14.6 percent drop marked the biggest year-on-year decline since the pandemic began, breaking the previous record of 9.7 percent logged in May last year.
In 2020, the number of newborns for the year dropped 2.9 percent from the preceding year, but the figure for the first month of this year fell even more.
“The number of pregnancy reports began dropping sharply in May last year,” said a ministry official. “That may explain the decline in births in January, when women who were pregnant around that time gave birth to their children.”
Women notify local municipalities after learning of their pregnancies. More than 90 percent of women report their pregnancies by the 11th week after conception, according to the ministry.
The number of pregnancy reports plummeted 17.6 percent from the same month a year ago in May 2020, a month after the government issued the nation’s first state of emergency over the pandemic. The year-on-year monthly decline continued until October that year.
In 2016, the number of Japanese born in the nation sank below a million for the first time since 1899, when record-keeping on births began. The figure dipped below 900,000 in 2019 to 865,239. The impact on society was so significant that it was dubbed the “860,000 shock.”
The figure for births of Japanese in the country last year has yet to be released, but is expected to fall below 850,000. Some estimates show the trend of postponing having children could push this year’s figure to below 800,000.
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