Breaking News English

The number of children in Japan has [felled / fallen] to its lowest number since records began. There were 170,000 [fewer / less] children in Japan at the end of March 2018 than there were a year [earlyish / earlier] . Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications issued a report on Friday [shown / showing] the falling numbers of children. According [to / at] the statistics, the number of children aged 14 or under dropped for the 37th [consecutively / consecutive] year. There was another record fall in the [ratio / patio] of children to the [overall / overalls] Japanese population. This dropped to a new record low of 12.3 per cent and was the 44th year of decline in a [low / row] . This ratio is the lowest among countries in the world with a population [for / of] 40 million or more.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been [trying / tried] to address the country's [dwindling / dawdling] birth rate. He has introduced [several / severance] measures to encourage lower-income families to have bigger families. However, these measures [seen / seem] to be having little success. This is [coupled / doubled] with the fact that fewer Japanese people are getting married, which demographers say is a "[ticking / tickling] time-bomb" for Japan. The number of annual births in 2016 [fall / fell] below one million for the first time [since / for] the government began collecting data in 1899. Japanese demographers predict that by 2050, Japan will have 23 per cent fewer [citizenry / citizens] . This means a rapidly [agreeing / aging] society and a greatly diminishing workforce.