Number of 18-year-olds in Japan rises to 1.09 mil

The number of 18-year-olds in Japan totaled 1.09 million as of Wednesday, a government estimate showed, up by 30,000 from last year but marking the second-lowest figure on record as the country continues to grapple with a declining birthrate.

Of those who have reached Japan's legal adult age, 560,000 were men and 530,000 were women, accounting for 0.88 percent of the total population, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said Tuesday.

The year 2006, when the new adults were born, had seen the country's total fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman is estimated to bear in her lifetime -- slightly pick up from a record-low 1.26 logged a year before. The increase was attributed to such factors as economic recovery.

The number of new adults hit a record-high 2.46 million in 1970. Following a decline, the figure surpassed 2 million in the early 1990s when those born between 1971 and 1974 amid a second baby boom reached adulthood.

But the number has been on a falling trend since then and it came to a record-low 1.06 million in 2024.

In Japan, the age of adulthood was lowered from 20 to 18 in April 2022 in a bid to encourage active social participation by youth.

The data includes foreign residents living in the country for over three months.