今日のテキスト CHILDREN ON THE WANE

Japan's government says the number of children currently in the country is the lowest on record. The figure has been falling for 34 straight years, and the ratio of children to the rest of the population has been decreasing since 1975.
Officials at the ministry of internal affairs say the number of people under 15 was an estimated 16.17 million as of April 1st. That number represents a decline of 160,000 in one year. The figure from 2014 was already the lowest since records were first kept in 1950.
Children aged up to 14 represented 12.7 percent of the entire population. That proportion was down by one-tenth of a percent from a year earlier and the lowest since 1950.
The only prefecture with a year-on-year increase in children was Tokyo, where the number went up by 14,000. The child population in every other prefecture was down or largely unchanged.