"Japan is expected to have 690,000 babies born this year..."Seventy-hundred-thousand-thousand-a-year"

The number of Japanese births is expected to fall below 700,000 this year for the first time since statistics were compiled, the Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun reported.

The Asahi Shimbun reported that the government applied the calculation formula used to estimate the annual number of births, and estimated that the annual number of births this year is 687,000.

This is a 5.5% decrease from last year's 727,288 births in Japan and the lowest since related statistics were compiled in 1899.

It is analyzed that the low birth rate crisis continues as Japan's birth rate has collapsed by 700,000 in two years since it first fell below 800,000 to 777,759 in 2022.