Japan’s birth rate in 2025 will likely fall below even the most pessimistic forecasts.
Preliminary data suggests 2025 will see fewer than 670,000 babies, the lowest since records began in 1899. Demographers had expected 749,000, and did not project births to fall so low until 2041.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has called the fertility crisis Japan’s “biggest problem,” especially given the country’s deep skepticism about inbound migration.
Falling birth rates are a near-global phenomenon, but East Asia has seen the most dramatic collapse. On current trends, South Korea’s population will fall two-thirds in the next century, despite moderately successful efforts to boost births; those efforts are utterly swamped by structural factors discouraging parenthood, Works in Progress reported.
