ISTANBUL (AA) – Japan may see a historic low number of new births this year, with economic and health concerns being major factors, government data has revealed.

If prevailing trends continue, preliminary data from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare show that “the number of babies born in Japan is set to drop to a record low for seven straight years in 2022, falling below 800,000 for the first time since the government started compiling statistics on births in 1899.”

The continued COVID-19 pandemic “has continued to cause women to delay plans to become pregnant,” Kyodo News reported on Tuesday.

Data revealed that the number of births from January to October this year fell 4.8% from the same period a year earlier to 669,871.

“Unless trends change this year, the annual total of newborns in the world’s third-largest economy is on track to hit around 770,000, compared to last year’s 811,604,” it added.

Since 1973, when the number of new births peaked at around 2.09 million, Japan has seen a decline in the number of new births.

A decade later, in 1984, Japan’s new births had fallen to 1.5 million. In 2016, there were less than a million new babies, according to data.