Japanese Population Dwindling - Fertility Rate Hits a Shocking 1.25 Percent

On June 1, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced that Japan's total fertility rate hit a record low of 1.25 in 2005, falling substantially from the 1.29 marked in the previous year. This is the fifth consecutive year that the rate has dropped. The rate for Tokyo was 0.98, the sole prefecture among the 47 prefectures to drop below the 1.0 mark. The figure of 1.25 was definitely beyond the expectation of the government.

When his cabinet was established in 2002, Prime Minister Koizumi pledged in his inauguration address to deal appropriately with the issue of the declining birthrate. With the recent acceleration of this decline, the government has concluded that the fertility rate should be 1.39 so as to maintain the pension scheme. It has undertaken various steps to reverse the rate to this figure, but it is now obvious that the steps have proved ineffective.

In the meantime, babies born last year totaled 1,063,000, a drop of 48,000 from the previous year. Deaths outnumbered births by 21,000, which means that natural population growth fell below zero for the first time since statistics started being gathered in 1899. The population, including non-Japanese residents, had already begun declining last year, two years earlier than the government forecast. And now the natural population decline has begun much earlier than expected.

The latest publication of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare statistics shows that the pension, medical, family-care and various other social security schemes must be inevitably revised, and almost all of members of the government and the ruling parties could not help expressing surprise and concern.

What can be done to turn around the declining birthrate and the decline in population? The Minister of State for Gender Equality and Social Affairs responsible for measures to cope with the declining number of children - a post newly established last autumn - said that, in view of the figure of 1.25, it is necessary to launch radical measures, rather than an extension of the conventional ones. However, the government is at present also tackling financial reform: even if radical, new steps are taken, it will be another major problem to secure the financial resources.