Data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on June 3 showed the total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have, fell to 1.14 in 2025, a tenth consecutive year of decline.
The number of babies born to Japanese nationals dropped to 671,236, down 2.2% from a year earlier and the fewest since the government began keeping count. Nikkei Asia noted that while both measures hit new lows, the pace of the decline had eased from the steeper falls of the pandemic years.
What alarms officials most is the speed. In its 2023 projection, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research did not expect annual births to fall to around 670,000 until 2040. That threshold has now been crossed a decade and a half early.
The institute's central forecast had projected roughly 749,000 births for 2025, nearly 78,000 above the actual figure, and the outcome undershot even its most pessimistic scenario of about 697,000.
Deaths actually fell in 2025, the ministry said, dropping to 1,589,489, the first decline in five years, an easing it linked partly to fewer Covid-19 fatalities.
