Japan's Population Continues to Decline

The Financial Times reports:

Deaths outnumbered births in Japan last year by the widest margin on record, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing the government as it tries to ensure a dwindling pool of workers can support growing ranks of pensioners. 

The urgency of getting the country’s finances in order was highlighted this week as preliminary figures indicated that Japan’s population fell by a record 268,000 in 2014.
According to the data published by the ministry of health, labour and welfare, births slipped by 2.8 per cent to a low of 1m, while deaths rose fractionally to a high of 1.27m. 

Since becoming prime minister a little more than two years ago, Shinzo Abe has forced the central bank to adopt more radical yen-weakening policies to spur inflation while allowing the first rise in consumption tax since 1997. 

Such measures are aimed at containing the government’s vast debts, which have swelled to more than twice the size of the economy amid rapidly rising payments for health and social security. 

Abenomics has improved Japan’s fiscal situation. A combination of higher corporate profits and the 3 percentage-point consumption tax increase last April seems set to push tax receipts to a 22-year high in the next fiscal year. 

This puts the government on course to meet a pledge to halve the gap between what it spends (excluding debt-service costs) and what it collects in tax, as a percentage of gross domestic product.