By RYUICHI HISANAGA/ Staff Writer
February 28, 2023 at 17:32 JST
A newborn leaves a hospital. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
The number of births in Japan in 2022 was 799,728, falling under 800,000 for the first time since such figures were first compiled in 1899, the health ministry’s preliminary statistics showed on Feb. 28.
The total included babies born to non-Japanese parents and to Japanese parents living abroad.
The ministry in June is expected to release a rough estimate of births to Japanese parents last year, and the figure is expected to be around 770,000.
That would be around half of the 1.515 million babies born to Japanese parents in 1982.
In a 2017 study, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimated that the total number of births in Japan would fall under 800,000 in 2033, while births to Japanese parents would drop below 780,000 that year.
The actual decline in births has come 11 years earlier than expected.
There were also 519,823 marriages in 2022, the first time in three years the figure has increased. But the increase was only by 5,581 couples.
The natural population decline, calculated by deducting the number of births from the number of deaths, was 782,305, a record decrease.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to release by the end of March an unprecedented package of measures to stem the falling birthrate.
He has also called for doubling government spending on children.
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