Japan: fewer babies were born in 2024 than in any year since 1873
709k births. In 1873, where the series begins: 842k. Even in the worst year of Russo-Japanese War, 1904, 1.5M were born, 2.1 times more.
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The number of babies born in a year, from the longest series for this country, since 1873. In 2024 there were fewer than in any earlier year, wars and epidemics included, although the population is now larger.
The line is births per year; the dot, the record low; the band, the years of the war with the fewest births.
- Births: long series thousand births per year
841.6 (1873) → 727.3 (2023)
Human Mortality Database, live births (September 2025 release, Our World in Data copy)
- Births: long series thousand births per year
1,500.1 (1904)
Human Mortality Database, live births (September 2025 release, Our World in Data copy)
- Births thousand births per year
709 (2024)
Births: Human Mortality Database; the latest years after its series ends, national statistics. Population then: births divided by births per 1,000 people of the same series. Selection: series of at least 100 years where a year since 2020 is below every earlier year.
The country’s borders may have changed over 150 years, and 19th-century birth registration was less complete, so births then were, if anything, more than recorded.
A question for this picture
What would have to change for births to rise again: incomes, housing or the wish to have children?