Japan logs fewer babies, more deaths in 2009
Jan 1, 2010 at 12:16Preliminary health ministry statistics showed that 22,000 fewer Japanese babies were born last year for a total of 1.069 million births. The decline follows a slight uptick in 2008.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths climbed for the ninth straight year to 1.144 million — the highest figure since the government began recording comparable data in 1947.
"The trend of increasing population decline is expected to continue in the future as the number of deaths increases due to the aging of the population, while the number of women who are of childbearing age is decreasing," Kyodo News agency quoted a ministry official as saying.
With extremely low fertility rates and the longest-living people in the world, Japan faces a demographic time bomb expected to overwhelm health and social welfare programs.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama last week unveiled a record 92.29 trillion yen ($1 trillion) budget for the next fiscal year that includes a campaign pledge to boost spending on child support. The government will start giving families 13,000 yen ($140) a month per child through junior high from April 2010 to help ease child-rearing costs and encourage more women have babies.
But he faces a daunting reality.
Japan has the lowest percentage of children among 31 major countries. Its current population of 126 million is projected to shrink by a quarter by 2050, when about 40 percent of the country will be over 65 years old, according to government estimates.
Fewer Japanese are getting married as well. The number of marriages in 2009 fell 1.7 percent from a year earlier to 714,000, the health ministry said. Divorces rose by about 2,000 cases to 253,000.
The leading causes of death were cancer, heart disease and stroke.