TOKYO, June 5 (Xinhua) -- The number of newborns in Japan stood at 865,234 in 2019, logging the lowest level on record, government statistics showed on Friday.
The number was down 53,166 compared to the previous year, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The country's total fertility rate, namely the average number of children a woman will bear in her lifetime, declined 0.06 point to 1.36.
The number of deaths in the reporting year was 1,381,098, marking the highest level since the end of World War II.
As a result, the number of deaths outnumbered births by 515,864, which is the biggest margin of decline since comparable data were made available in 1899.
The number of babies born in the country has been on a declining trend since peaking at about 2.7 million in 1949.
In May, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet vowed to provide support in an effort to increase the average number of children per couple to 1.8.
Southernmost Okinawa prefecture was the only one of the country's 47 prefectures to have more births than deaths in 2019, with the highest total fertility rate at 1.82.
Meanwhile, Tokyo marked the lowest total fertility rate at 1.15, followed by Miyagi at 1.23 and Hokkaido at 1.24. Enditem
