Lack of Babies Could Mean the Extinction of the Japanese People
Japan has a problem, a lack of children, and it seems likely there will be even fewer in the future.
Japanese researchers have now warned of a doomsday scenario if it carries on this way with the last child to be born there in 3011 and the Japanese people potentially disappearing a few generations later.
Academics from the city of Sendai, which was hit hard by last year’s tsunami, calculate there are now 16.6 million children under the age of 14 now in Japan.
And they say that number is shrinking at a disturbing rate of one every 100 seconds.
So if you do the mathematics, as they did, then the country will have no children within a millennium.
Another study recently showed Japan’s population is expected to fall a third from its current 127.7 million over the next century.
Government projections show the birth rate will hit just 1.35 children per woman within 50 years, well below the replacement rate.
Now academics have created a population clock to highlight the fall and encourage public debate on the issue.