Sign of Population Upturn in Japan?

Japan is shrinking population-wise, and lots of data are coming out to forecast Japan's future image. Talk about aging, young girl stay on single longer than they should be, birthrate falling fast - well, it's a big headache for Japan for sure.

Now, here's an encouraging news on Japan's birthrate, folks. 

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare just announced that in the first six months Japan registered a slight upward shift in birthrate in its Vital Statistics Report(preliminary figures), August 27.

The report shows in the first six months 508,802 babies were born, approximately 12,000 more than in the same period last year, while the annual birthrate still marks a downward trend since the all-time high of 2.7 million in 1949. If the trend keeps up, the annual birthrate 2015 will possibly surpass that of the preceding year.

Some experts account the trend for an economic upturn and a series of countermeasures adopted to tackle the falling birthrate. It seems, though, that the overall population of "productive" females in late teens through forties' is expected to fall, and the Ministry of Welfare is watching whether the momentary upward trend in birthrate is here to stay.

Now, the decline in fertility is often technically termed sub-replacement fertility, meaning a total fertility leading to each generation being less populous than the previous one in a given area. In developed countries sub-replacement fertility is 2.1 or so while in some developing countries the threshold can be up to 3.4 to make up for their high mortality rate.

The world's total fertility rate at replacement was 2.33 in 2003, or two children per woman. In 2010, about 48% of the world's population live in nations with sub-replacement fertility. Japan is among the countries with Germany, Lithuania and Ukraine with low enough or sustained sub-replacement to have population decline.