At 123.0 million total members, this marks the 16th consecutive year of declining population, with the first exceeding 126.6 million in FY2009.
The gradual fall is partially in response to three main trends: economic difficulties, cultural anxieties, and the aging population.
The government has been trying to fight the trend, but they are losing ground every year, and the number of births continues to lag well behind deaths.
The Age of Consequence Fewer births, more deaths, and an aging population Demographic equilibrium in Japan.
Decompensation in the demographic situation of Japan is increasing. The lowest number ever recorded by this series, which began in 1968, was 687,689, which occurred in 2024.
Deaths, in the meantime, had reached almost 1.6 million globally — an all-time high. Vladimir.
This expanding chasm has resulted in an aging population for Japan and fewer youth.
This grew to nearly 30% of the total population within just over two decades. In comparison, the 15–64 age group (working ages) accounted for only 59 % of the total in 2024.
This is well below the global average of 65% and hence places more strain on the pension, health care, and eventually social systems of the country.
Japan has the lowest fertility rate on earth (with a few individual exceptions), which has been low since the 1970s, and is expected to keep declining for decades even if it improves.
The older-younger citizen imbalance will take decades to even out, growing yet more starkly unbalanced until births begin ticking up; that itself may never happen.
Could Immigration Fill the Shortfall?
A number of factors are bringing family formation to an all-time low. Ridiculously expensive lives, ever-shrinking homes, stagnating salaries, and an all-encompassing work ethic have left many young people thinking twice before walking down the aisle or bringing a new life into this world.
Despite a world in which women are stigmatized for not being mothers, where womanhood is equated with motherhood, it's clear that cultural norms and assumptions around femininity — and what it means to be male or female — continue to diverge widely.
Traditionally, Japan has had the most conservative approach to immigration, but that is slowly changing, too.
The record was topped in 2024, when the number of foreign residents exceeded 3.6 million for the first time a more than 10% increase on five years before.
This shift is being supported by measures like digital nomad visas and new moves to train foreign workers.
Revised 2023 projections have declined somewhat, suggesting that Japan's population could shrink by as much as 30% in 2070. But the IOM projections also indicate that overall rates of decrease could slow with international migration.
Japan, however, is nowhere near out of the woods in its struggle to solve a population crisis that has been in progress for years.
