Nearly half of Japanese adults do not start having sex until after they reach 34 years of age, as the majority of young adults remain single in the country, where the population has fallen by nearly 1 million in the past five years.

The study, conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, revealed that 42 percent of the men and 44.2 percent of the women aged 18 to 34 are still virgins in Japan.

The trend in society seems to have deteriorated since the last study came out in 2010. At the start of the decade, only 36.2 percent of men and 38.7 percent of women said they had never had sex.

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Furthermore, as the new research revealed, the trend is unlikely to change in the near future as 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women have still yet to find a partner for a steady relationship.

Researchers noted that the demographics of the country faces challenges with the increase in singles in their late 20s, the age when women are most fertile.

Nearly 90 percent of the respondents declared that they are in no rush to get married and are planning to do it “sometime in the future.”

Some 30 percent of the 2,706 single men sampled and 26 percent of the 2,570 females claimed that they were not currently looking for a heterosexual relationship.

“They want to tie the knot eventually. But they tend to put it off as they have gaps between their ideals and the reality,” said Futoshi Ishii, head of the NIPSSR’s population dynamics research department. “That’s why people marry later or stay single for life, contributing to the nation’s low birthrate.”

The study, which was conducted in June 2015, questioned 8,754 single people and 6,598 married couples across the country. In addition to the growing number of virgins, the study also discovered a record-low rate of children per family. The number of children among couples who have been married between 15 and 19 years averaged only 1.94.

Boosting the birthrate in the country is one of the Shinzo Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan, who aims to raise fertility from current 1.4 to 1.8 children per family by 2025.

The population now stands at 127.1 million, but has been declining by an average of 0.7 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to the latest census. Overall, the population has fallen by nearly 1 million in the past five years. Japan’s demographics are forecast to fall to about 83 million by 2100, with some 35 percent aged over 65, according to the United Nations.