Society Japan's population falls for 13th straight year to below 125 million

• Japan's population falls for 13th straight year
• Japan's population fell below 125 million last October
• Seniors 75 and older top 20 million in Japan for the first time
• The number of foreign nationals living in Japan increased to 3,159,000

Japan's population fell by 595,000 from a year earlier to 124,352,000 as of 1 October, marking the 13th consecutive year of decline, with household size also continuing to shrink, national data showed Friday. The population of most significant nationals fell by 837,000 to 121,193,000, marking the largest drop since comparable data became available in 1950, according to a demographic survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, despite government efforts to grapple with the country's declining birthrate and rapidly ageing society. 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.

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