The number of babies born in Japan in the January to June period decreased 5.7% from a year before to 350,074, hitting a record low for the first half, the health ministry has said in a preliminary report.
The first-half figure fell short of 400,000 for the third consecutive year, while the pace of decline accelerated from the year-before drop of 3.6%, the report released Friday said.
If the number of births falls at a similar pace in the second half of 2024, the annual total could fall below 700,000 for the first time.
Meanwhile, the number of couples who got married during the same period grew 0.9% to 248,513, up for the first time in two years. The number of deaths increased 1.8% to 811,819, bringing the country's natural population decline, or the number of deaths minus that of births, to 461,745.
The annual number of births was below 800,000 for the first time in 2022, and fell to a record low of 727,277 in 2023, marking the eighth consecutive year of decline.
In 2023, Japan's total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, also hit a record low of 1.20.
While the preliminary report covered babies born to foreign nationals living in Japan and to Japanese nationals living overseas, a forthcoming revised report will cover only Japanese nationals living in Japan. Therefore, it is likely to show an even smaller number of births.