Japan is having a birth rate crisis – because the nation has gone off sex, it has been revealed.

A quarter of married couples in Japan have not made love in the past year, according to the World Health Organisation.

The country’s birth rate is already among the lowest in the world and is falling even further.

Although there is no comparable data for other countries, earlier surveys suggest Japan is among the world’s least sexually active nations.

Sex is particularly elusive as people grow older, with the study finding that 37.3% of Japanese married couples in their 50s do without sex at all.

Japan’s Nihon University’s Population Research Institute, which conducted the study with the WHO, said there needed to be a serious look at the issue.

“There may be a need to look into the fundamental aspect of reproduction – the frequency of having sex – as a new problem in a nation with a low birth rate,” the report concluded.

The government is looking at ways to make society more family-friendly, including giving working mothers more legal protection and cutting Japan’s notoriously long working hours.

On the brighter side, sex was most frequent among young married people in Japan.

The survey found that 42.2% of couples in their 20s who had lived together for less than five years had sex at least once a week.

Via news.sky.com