'Miracle' Japanese town has birth rate nearly double national average

Nagi, a town in western Japan, has kept its birth rate well above the national average for years by redirecting town spending toward families, even as Japan's fertility rate sank to a record low.

Japan's national rate fell to 1.14 in 2025, its 10th straight annual decline.

Births totaled 671,236, the fewest since records began in 1899, and Tokyo's rate dropped below 1.0, according to Kyodo News.

Nagi's rate hit 2.95 in 2019, an Okayama prefectural survey found, earning it the nickname "miracle town." It has eased since but stayed well ahead of the national figure, at 2.21 in 2020, 2.68 in 2021 and an estimated 2.21 in 2022, according to town data.

The town logged 172 official study visits in 2023, the most of any local government in Japan, in a survey by Nikkei Business Publications.

Then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida toured it that year to study its methods, NHK reported.

Children wait along the route of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic torch relay in the town of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Photo by Reuters

Nagi's turnaround started with a 2002 referendum. As Japan pressed small towns to merge, Nagi's residents voted to stay independent.

"We decided to expand child-rearing and education support to maintain the population," Mayor Masachika Oku, 67, a town official at the time, told The Mainichi.

Towns that decline to merge receive smaller central government grants, so Nagi cut administrative costs, including reducing its assembly from 14 seats to 10, and steered the savings to families.

Such subsidies are now common nationwide, yet few towns match Nagi's results, Okayama Broadcasting reported. Yasushi Iwabuchi, an associate professor at Okayama University, told the broadcaster that going it alone forced Nagi to confront depopulation about 20 years ahead of its peers.

Families in Nagi receive a 100,000-yen (US$617) payment for each child, and medical care, school materials and lunches are free through high school, according to The Mainichi.

Because the town has no high school, it pays for students to commute elsewhere. In fiscal 2024 it extended its English-language assistant teacher program to classes for infants under 1 year old.

The town opened Nagi Child Home in 2007 in a former kindergarten near the town hall. Six town contract staff and volunteers run it, offering drop-in care for 300 yen ($1.85) an hour for children from 6 months old through first grade.

Twice a month it hosts "munch-munch time," where mothers make baby food with a staff nutritionist for a 100-yen fee.

Hiroko Kaihara, 55, who helped set up the center, told The Mainichi the team built it without a model, aiming for "a place where people could gather casually and no one would be isolated."

To keep parents working close to home, a public-private group launched Shigoto Konbini, a "job convenience store," in 2017.

Since 2019 it has been run by Nagi Shigoto En, a residents' association, with about 370 people registered, including parents and older residents who can spare only short stretches.

Tasks range from sorting documents and inserting flyers to farm work and tending graves, and the group fields close to 1,000 orders a year.

Sayaka Hanafusa, 37, who moved from Kanagawa Prefecture after marrying, runs a painting class while raising a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old. She told The Mainichi she has helped sow seeds and harvest cabbage between classes.

"It's nice to be able to work in your free time," she said.

The group keeps client fees low and leans on town subsidies to maintain workers' pay, said representative director Yoshikazu Kuwamura, 68. "We're able to keep this going thanks to the town's support," he told The Mainichi.

Oku said the town would keep expanding child-rearing support to survive.