TOKYO (AP) – Japan’s population dropped this year for the first time on record, the government said Thursday, signaling a demographic turnaround for one of the world’s fastest-aging societies.

The Health Ministry’s annual survey showed deaths outnumbered births this year by 10,000 – the first time that had happened since such data were first compiled in 1899, ministry official Yukiko Yamaguchi said.

The announcement marked an acceleration of earlier projections that forecast Japan’s population of 127.7 million would start declining as early as 2006 and would likely fall by 27 million people to 100.7 million by 2050.

The crowded nation’s declining birthrate – 1.29 children per Japanese woman in 2004, also a record low – is at the root of the population turnaround. Later marriage ages, cramped housing and high education costs are cited as reasons for women having fewer children.

While fewer people could mean a roomier Japan, the shrinking population could threaten the country with labor shortages, tax shortfalls and an overburdened pension system as the ratio of taxpaying workers shrinks in comparison to the number of retirees.

Earlier this year, a report by the government’s Statistics Bureau said nearly one in five Japanese were aged 65 or older in 2004, and the figure could balloon to one in four in the next decade.

Japan began tracking births and deaths in 1899, and has kept records every year since except for the 1944-46 period, in the chaos of the country’s defeat in World War II.