TOKYO, May 4 (Xinhua) -- The number of children in Japan dropped by 170,000 from a year earlier to 15.53 million as of April 1, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said in a report Friday.
According to the statistics bureau's data, the number of children aged 14 or under dropped for the 37th successive year, marking a new record low since record keeping began in 1950 and casting a shadow over Shinzo Abe administration's efforts to reverse the nation's lengthy low birthrate.
Abe has set about trying to combat the nation's dwindling birthrate by trying to facilitate child-rearing through upping the number of daycare facilities and through state-backed initiatives to support families with low incomes.
But the results have yet to make a quantifiable difference, as evidenced by the ratio of children to the population dropping to a new record low of 12.3 percent and marking the 44th consecutive year of decline, according to the bureau.
The ratio of children to the overall population in Japan is the lowest among countries in the world with a population of 40 million or more, with the ministry's data showing that by age the number of newborn babies to two-year-old children stood at just 2.93 million in the recording period.
Children aged 12 to 14 made up the largest group, the ministry said, at 3.26 million, with an overall gender integer of 7.95 million boys and 7.58 million girls.
Compared to Japan's current number of children standing at 15.53 million in the recording period, there were 29.89 million children at Japan's baby-boom peak in 1954.
According to leading demographers, by 2050 Japan will have 23 percent fewer citizens, with current demographic trends likely to continue to the end of the century.
In 2017, Japan's population fell for a seventh straight year to 126.70 million, with people aged over 64 comprising 27.7 percent of the total, according to the government's data.
Some economists have described the implications of Japan's demographic crisis as a ticking "time-bomb" as a rapidly aging and simultaneously shrinking society is diminishing the nation's workforce.
"This is the biggest crisis facing the nation, with only half-baked Abe-led reforms being introduced to cope with a future 'hollowed out' workforce, plummeting birthrate and rocketing social security costs that threaten to irrevocably reshape Japan's economic landscape," Hisao Katayama, a senior equity analyst at Nomura Securities Co. told Xinhua.
