Japan’s population falls for 13th straight year as it grapples with declining birth rates, rapidly ageing society
Meanwhile, the foreign national population rose 243,000 to about 3.16 million. Foreign workers and students who had been in Japan more than 90 days were counted in the overall population figure, according to the ministry.
Among the country’s 47 prefectures, only Tokyo saw a rise in population, the second straight year of increase for the Japanese capital.
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Japan’s population falls rapidly in 2023, losing the equivalent of San Francisco
In an estimate released by a national population institute the same day, single-person households were forecast to account for 44.3 per cent of the 52.61 million households in Japan in 2050, with nearly half of them made up of people aged 65 or older.
In 2020, the number of single households accounted for 38 per cent of the total.
Among the elderly living alone in 2050, 59.7 per cent of men and 30.2 per cent of women are projected to have never married, up from 33.7 per cent and 11.9 per cent, respectively, in 2020, according to the data by National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
The projected trend suggests that the central and local governments need to enhance support for elderly people in areas such as nursing care.