Source: ZeroHedge.com
When it comes to monetary and fiscal policy, Japan is doomed. Unfortunately it is also doomed demographically.
Extending what has long been the most dismal trend in Japan’s civilizational history, government data showed that the number of babies born in Japan fell for an eighth straight year to a fresh record low in 2023, underscoring the daunting task the country faces in trying to stem depopulation.
The number of births in 2023 fell 5.1% from a year earlier to 758,631, while the number of marriages slid 5.9% to 489,281, the first time in 90 years the number fell below 500,000 – the last time the number was this low the US had just dropped the atom bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki – signaling even greater declines in the population as out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan.
The drop comes more than a decade earlier than the government’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research forecast, which estimated births would decline to below 760,000 in 2035, according to Kyodo news….