Given the task definition and input, reply with output. In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

Talk about a shrinking population. A survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship. 
  
 Moreover, many of them have never got close and cuddly. Around 42 percent of the men and 44.2 percent of the women admitted they were virgins. 
  
 The government won’t be pleased that sexlessness is becoming as Japanese as sumo and sake. The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has talked up boosting the birthrate through support for child care, but until the nation bones up on bedroom gymnastics there’ll be no medals to hand out. 
  
 Far from getting together and getting it on, the sexes are growing apart. There are now many more virgins than in 2010, when the last study was conducted and when only 36.2 percent of men and 38.7 percent of women said they had never had sex. 
  
 The study, released Thursday, was conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. 
  
 The institute has conducted the same survey every five years since 1987, when the proportion of unmarried men and women who said they had no partner stood at 48.6 percent and 39.5 percent, respectively. 
  
 There was no accounting for the discrepancy between the genders, except perhaps for the age-old problem of men and women having different understandings of the word “commitment.” 
  
 The surveys did not ask about same-sex partners. 
  
 The institute said the increase in singles was particularly sharp for people in their late 20s, the age at which science tells us women are most fertile. 
  
 Asked about their hopes for the future, there seemed to be recognition that families are what humans are destined for. Nearly 90 percent of the respondents said they want to get married “sometime in the future.” 
  
 But 30 percent of the 2,706 men sampled and 26 percent of the 2,570 female respondents said they were not currently looking for a 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.” 
  
 Boosting the birthrate is one of the coveted goals of the Abe administration, which has declared it will raise the fertility rate from the current 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025 or so. The government hopes to achieve this by making it easier for families to raise children, such as by increasing the places available at nursery schools. 
  
 The survey suggests it may also have to find a way to play cupid. 
  
 Meanwhile, the same study found that the number of children among couples who have been married for between 15 and 19 years averaged a record-low 1.94. 
  
 But in a plus for female empowerment, it also showed the ratio of women who returned to work after having their first child exceeded 50 percent for the first time. 
  
 The study, conducted in June last year, covered 8,754 single people and 6,598 married couples across the country. ||||| That's according to a government survey published last week, claiming that 42% of men and 44.2% of women -- almost half of Japan's millennial singles aged between 18 to 34 -- are virgins. 
  
 While some prefer it that way, others would like their fortunes to change, with 85.7% of men and 89.3% of women harboring hopes of marriage in the future. The survey did not look at same-sex partners. 
  
 Japan's lack of interest in sex is blamed on everything from a stagnant economy to Japanese manga fans favoring fantasy over reality. 
  
 Changing social norms 
  
 The latest government survey found that 42 % of men aged between 18 to 34 were still virgins. 
  
 Japan has one of the world's lowest birthrates and is home to a severely aging population, with a recent survey finding 34.6 million Japanese aged over 65. 
  
 But despite, the government's attempts to boost the number of marriages and children, this year's survey results from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, don't reveal a swerve in the right direction. 
  
 Nancy Snow, a professor of public diplomacy from the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, told CNN that changing social and economic norms contributed to the decrease in relationships between men and women. 
  
 "Men are making about a third to half of what they used to make during Japan's economic boom years in the 1980s. Some men's sense of self is tied to their salary and they feel threatened by women who are empowering themselves," said Snow. 
  
 She explained that the income decrease made men in Japan feel less confident in attracting Japan's increasingly successful class of women, who have become used to earning their own money and putting themselves first. 
  
 "While men are going from a cradle to grave trajectory, there are a lot of professional women with disposable incomes, who think that marriage might not just be worth it," said Snow. 
  
 'Solving the virgin problem' 
  
 Photos: Inspiring Japan's middle-aged virgins A nude sketching class in Tokyo aims to help Japan's middle-aged virgins by allowing them to spend time with a real female body. Hide Caption 1 of 6 Photos: Inspiring Japan's middle-aged virgins A Japanese government survey in 2010 found that one in four Japanese men in their thirties who've never been married are virgins. The figures were only slightly less for women. Hide Caption 2 of 6 Photos: Inspiring Japan's middle-aged virgins A flyer for the nude art class. Hide Caption 3 of 6 Photos: Inspiring Japan's middle-aged virgins The classes are offered bimonthly in Tokyo by the non-profit White Hands. Hide Caption 4 of 6 Photos: Inspiring Japan's middle-aged virgins White Hands offers a course and textbook on how to graduate from virginity. Hide Caption 5 of 6 Photos: Inspiring Japan's middle-aged virgins Sexual apathy is extremely troubling for Japan, which has the world's most rapidly aging population and is where citizens are not producing enough children to sustain a healthy economy in the coming years. Hide Caption 6 of 6 
  
 There are support groups for men who want to overcome their anxiety of approaching women. 
  
 White Hands, a Tokyo-based non-profit offers regular nude art classes, where mostly middle-aged men sketch naked female models. The classes, complete with textbooks, also try to help people feel more comfortable with their sexuality. 
  
 Class organizer Shingo Sakatsume, who calls himself a "sex helper," understands how growing interest in the fantasy world of anime is leading single men to choose entertainment over real love and sex. 
  
 "By solving the virgin problem, I think we can solve many other problems related to sex," Sakatsume, told CNN in 2015. 
  
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 Snow asserted that such nude art classes could potentially be more helpful if there were also women on hand to draw naked male models. 
  
 "Here's an opportunity to bring men and women together -- they could have wine to break the ice and communicate more," said Snow. "To just make it men looking at a female model perpetuates the problem." 
  
 Is 35 the new 25? 
  
 Though the Japanese population is aging at a breakneck speed, Snow said that the latest survey only looked at young people as data sets and didn't take into account their specific stories or circumstances. 
  
 "If you're living until you're 90, then putting off having a dating partner till your thirties until you've found yourself might seem rational -- there's a lot more self-exploration going on," said Snow. |||||  
  
 A group of friends walk along Takeshita Street in Harajuku on May 25, 2010, in Tokyo. (Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) 
  
 Japan's demographic challenges are well-known: It's home to the world's oldest population and has a shrinking birthrate and an astonishing number of single people. And it seems that, despite government efforts to incentivize marriage and child-rearing, things aren't quite trending in the right direction. 
  
 According to the Japan Times, a new survey of Japanese people ages 18 to 34 found that 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship. It gets worse: Around 42 percent of men and 44.2 percent of women admitted that they were virgins. 
  
 The study is carried out by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research every five years. The organization has noted a marked trend since its first foray on questions of relationships and sex in 1987, when it found that 48.6 percent of men and 39.5 percent of women surveyed were unmarried. In 2010, 36.2 percent of men and 38.7 percent of women in the 18-34 age bracket said they were virgins. The number of children among couples who have been married for between 15 and 19 years averaged a record low this year. 
  
 The Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said it wants to raise the nation's fertility rate from 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025. It's offering better child-care services and tax incentives for married couples, though such programs have yet to bear statistical fruit. 
  
 Most people surveyed said they want to get married at some point. It's just not clear when. 
  
 "They want to tie the knot eventually. But they tend to put it off as they have gaps between their ideals and the reality," Futoshi Ishii, head researcher for the study, told Japan Times. "That’s why people marry later or stay single for life, contributing to the nation’s low birthrate." 
  
 This is not unique to Japan — in various parts of the developed world, economic uncertainty is reshaping the way millennials and other young people conceive of their sex lives and marital choices. But it's particularly pronounced in the Asian nation, where experts and government officials have spent the better part of a decade fretting over the country's population decline and, as WorldViews once put it, "sexual apathy." 
  
 A booming industry surrounds Japan's growing condition of loneliness, a phenomenon at once quite particular to the Japanese, yet also a glimpse into a future where many people live atomized lives mediated exclusively through personal technology. 
  
 There was one clearly positive indicator in the survey: For the first time, the proportion of women returning to work after having their first child in Japan's once notoriously patriarchal society exceeded 50 percent. 
  
 More on WorldViews 
  
 Lonely Japanese men protest the 'blood-soaked conspiracy' of Valentine's Day 
  
 In Tokyo, the 'war on Christmas' is led by lonely, single men 
  
 In Japan, the elderly are committing more crimes than teenagers |||||

While America might more typically worry about what its youth are doing, Japan spends a lot of time worrying about what they're not doing, and what they're not doing is having sex—at all, apparently. A new government survey suggests that the country's millennials are not only in no hurry to marry, but apparently aren't in any rush to do the deed. To wit, a whopping 44% of women and 42% of men, amounting to nearly half of the country's millennial singles ages 18 to 34, say they are still virgins, reports the Washington Post. But the percentage of these singles who say they hope to marry in the future is up close to 90%. "People marry later or stay single for life, contributing to the nation’s low birthrate," the head researcher tells the Japan Times. "They want to tie the knot eventually, but they tend to put it off as they have gaps between their ideals and the reality." With an aging generation of baby boomers weighing down what is already the world's oldest population, Japan has for years been trying to encourage its dwindling number of young people to marry and have children. But complicating this quandary, CNN reports that the apparent lack of interest in engaging in actual sex could result in part from the country's many manga fans choosing fantasy over reality. Plus more women are making more money and choosing to marry later or not at all, while many men report feeling intimidated by them. "They feel threatened by women who are empowering themselves," one expert says. (A quarter of young men and almost half of young women in Japan go so far as to say they despise sexual contact.)