Japan is shrinking. Fast.
The health ministry recently announced that only 946,060 babies were born in Japan in 2017, the fewest births since official statistics began in 1899. At the same time, 1,340,433 Japanese people died last year. This means that the non-immigrant population declined by nearly 400,000 people.
It’s an astonishing shift. The Japanese population grew steadily throughout the 20th century, from around 44 million in 1900 to 128 million in 2000. The gains were primarily due to increased life expectancy, but also buoyed by families that typically had at least two children. But beginning in the late 1970s, birth rates crashed. While the average Japanese woman had 2.1 kids in the 1970s, today, they only have about 1.4—far lower than in comparably wealthy countries like the US and Sweden.
Today, Japan is a land of aging baby boomers and young adults who don’t want to have kids. By median age, Japan is the oldest large country in the world. More than half of its population is over the age of 46. By comparison, in Nigeria, just over a tenth of the population is over that age.
The oldest countries by median age, 2015
| Rank | Country | Median age |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | 46.3 |
| 2 | Italy | 45.9 |
| 3 | Germany | 45.9 |
| 4 | Portugal | 43.9 |
| 5 | Martinique | 43.7 |
| 6 | Bulgaria | 43.5 |
| 7 | Greece | 43.3 |
| 8 | Austria | 43.2 |
| 9 | Hong Kong | 43.2 |
| 10 | Spain | 43.2 |
Demographers forecast a steep population decline for Japan this century. The Japanese Statistics Bureau (pdf) estimates that the Japanese population will fall to just over 100 million by 2050, from around 127 million today. The United Nations estimates that Japan’s population will decline by a third from current levels, to 85 million, by 2100. That would make it the fastest-contracting country among the world’s 30 most populous nations.