Japan OKs plan to boost child allowances to tackle falling birthrate

15 comments

1. How much? if it’s something like just 20000 yen every 3 months it means nothing to parents

2. I love how kishida’s only solution to any issue is to raise taxes or perform a stealth tax hike on every body and then hand out free money to people not paying residence tax (the elderly)

   Everyone would be a hell of a lot happier if he stopped trying these stupid schemes to redistribute that leave most people worse off.

   The article fails to mention that they are removing the ability to claim a child as a dependant after implementing the allowance so people with a significant income will actually owe more money in taxes that the value of the allowance.

3. Anything that makes houikuen availability better is a good idea, but I am very skeptical about cash payments and the ROI on that. Do people really decide to have a child because they will get a smallish amount from the government?

   If I recall correctly, not many countries have had any lasting success with turning around birthrates through these schemes. Maybe Hungary and I think there might have been a program in Sweden.

   Once you have a cultural shift in preferences – like having 1 child (in Japan) or no children (like some younger generations in China and America), you are pretty much screwed with the exception of immigration. And immigration comes with its own issues (ahem…Canada).

   Get ready to get smaller.

4. This will not work in other countries the same type of policy has been implemented and has produced no if not minuscule changes in tackling falling birthrates.

5. why is immigration not seen as a solution?

   mono cultures in any species eventually all die. Mutation and crossbreeding is what drives progress. Yes I do horticulture and stock.

6. Ah yes, when you can’t think of any other solution. Toss money at it. Because that’ll fix the issue of parents not being able to be at home nor having any reliable and affordable child-care. Yup, that’ll do it.

7. An extra ¥10k a month for a few more years isn’t much. That will pay for their school lunch and maybe partial transportation to high school I guess?

8. let’s treat the symptom, not the cause

9. While it wouldn’t be a factor in having kids, I’m happy to get a bit extra to help pay for sports and juku. In Inaka it’s a decent amount, it seems awfully low for city life though…

10. Little late for that, Japan.

11. Could we have like livable wages maybe? And something called, what was it again… ah yeah work-life balance.

12. No one is going to decide to have children based on an extra 180000 yen a year. They are just throwing money at people who were going to have that many children anyway.

13. He just fucking throws money at every problem. It’s like putting a bandaid on a gaping infected wound.

    ‘Don’t worry everyone if you apply for this using these incredibly annoying document, hand it to the city office, call us when nothing happens (all of this somehow you have to balance with work) you then get a 35,000 payment next summer to fix the cost of living crisis!!!!!!!’

14. Yeah that won’t work.

15. Third child and beyond gets a monthly support of ¥30,000?

    So if I’m correct in my understanding, if you have four kids you receive monthly:

    Child 1 ¥10,000
    Child 2 ¥10,000
    Child 3 ¥30,000
    Child 4 ¥30,000
    Total: ¥80,000 a month for 4 kids?

    This is actually a serious help, unless I’m misunderstanding. Good on the government!