Japan’s precipitous population decline shows no sign of slowing, with the nation shrinking by more than 900,000 people last year – the biggest annual drop on record, according to government data.
The data, released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on Wednesday, showed that the number of Japanese nationals fell by 908,574 in 2024, bringing the total population to 120 million.
Since peaking at 126.6 million in 2009, the population has declined for 16 consecutive years, diminished by various factors like a struggling economy and deep-seated gender norms.
With the population of Japanese nationals set to continue plummeting for decades yet, the country will feel the blow to its pension and health care systems, and other social infrastructure that is difficult to maintain with a shrinking workforce.
The government has been trying to fight the decline for more than a decade, with efforts accelerating in recent years as the full scale of the crisis became clear – doing everything from offering childbirth and housing subsidies to encouraging fathers to take paternity leave.
But each year, fewer babies are born, and more deaths are recorded – a vicious cycle and a symptom of a population skewing older and older. The proportion of elderly is too high – accounting for nearly 30% of the entire population, according to the new data – while the proportion of younger adults, of child-bearing and working age, is continually shrinking.
Last year was no exception. The number of births recorded, at just 687,689, was the lowest among records going back to 1968 – while the number of deaths, at nearly 1.6 million, was the highest on record.
The working-age population, defined as between 15 to 64, made up only 59% of the population in Japan last year – far lower than the global average of 65%, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
This decline has been decades in the making, thanks to Japan’s consistently low fertility rate since the 1970s. Because of this, sociologists and demographers say, there’s no quick fix – and it’s not reversible.
Even if Japan manages to boost its fertility rate dramatically and immediately – which is a big “if” – its population is bound to keep decreasing for at least several more decades until the skewed young-old ratio balances out, and the babies being born now reach childbearing age themselves.
Are immigrants the answer?
Experts have pointed to Japan’s high cost of living, stagnant economy and wages, limited space, and demanding work culture as reasons fewer people are opting to date, marry or have children.
For women, economic costs are not the only turn-off. Japan remains a highly patriarchal society in which married women are often expected to take the caregiver role, despite government efforts to get husbands more involved. Single parents are far less common in Japan than in many Western countries.
Many of these issues are also plaguing other East Asian nations with their own population woes, including China and South Korea.
One possible solution, experts have pointed out, would be to plug the gap by welcoming more immigrants – a controversial topic in Japan, a largely conservative country that perceives itself as ethnically homogenous. Foreign residents and Japanese nationals of mixed ethnicity have long complained of xenophobia, racism and discrimination.
But the government has leaned into this option, launching a new digital nomad visa and crafting a new plan to upskill foreign workers. And there are signs it may be taking effect; the number of foreign residents in Japan increased by more than 10% last year to a record high of 3.6 million people, according to the new data.
According to government models, which were most recently revised in 2023, Japan’s population will fall by 30% by 2070 – but by then, “the pace of population decline is expected to slow down slightly, mainly due to the increase in international migration.”
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