Japan's fertility crisis even worse than before as births fall sharply cnn.com

(CNN) Japan's fertility crisis is worsening, with data from the first seven months of this year showing the sharpest drop in births in 30 years, according to preliminary government data.
During this period, the total number of births was 518,590.
For the whole of 2018, the official tally of births was 918,397, a figure which however excludes babies born to foreigners in Japan and Japanese babies born abroad.
The decline in births is "happening faster than official projections had envisioned," said Yasushi Mineshima, a spokesman for the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
In 2005, it reached a record low of 1.26, but then seemed to be on a path of recovery until it started to fall again in 2016, according to government figures .