Japan vows to boost child allowances to tackle falling birthrate

9 comments

1. It’s not going to do anything. According to Japan fertility survey, married couples already have their 1.94 kids.

   The birth rate issue is due to young people failing to marry and thus having kids, NOT because married people don’t have enough. So the issue is why aren’t young people getting married despite wanting to for 85% of them?

   Lack of economic prospect for the man. Hence he doesn’t think he can get married because he cannot support a family, and she doesn’t want to marry such man anyway because the wives here expect the husbands to bring in the bacon…

   So fix young men’s employment, but that would decrease some people’s profits…

2. My wife and I are waiting until we move to the US to have kids (I’m American she’s Japanese). Main reasons are:

   -I don’t make enough money. I’d also like to have a somewhat decent work/life balance so I can raise my kids.

   -I want my wife to be able to pursue her life and career goals after having kids.

   -My kids will be mixed. They’ll still face prejudice wherever they go, but to a much lesser extent in the US.

   I’ll miss the safety and healthcare though.

3. This isn’t about money. It’s about the inherent desire or need to have children. Not many couples are thinking to themselves “If we only had more money…”. Those who don’t want children won’t be convinced and those who wanted children would have already had them, regardless of income.
   The only thing that can turn this around (if that’s even the right solution for the country) is to reintroduce social pressure and make having children “the right thing to do” again. I myself is married without children and I feel that I have made the right choice. As weird as it may sound if the government is so determined to recover the birth rate they need to make people like me regret my choices. It has to be that powerful.
   I can almost guarantee that the allowance will just disappear in to the void with no real changes.

4. Uh-huh. Solved!

   Sooner or later, Japan is going to realize that they’re in competition with other wealthy nations to attract international migration to deal with domestic birth rates. Any decade now.

5. Even if you pay the child allowance, it will disappear as another loan payment.For example, as a payment for housing and cars.

6. They will literally do anything except talk about the core issues. smdh…

7. They plan to raise taxes at the same time, so in the end nothing will change.

8. Throw money at a problem not solved by money.

9. Fix the quality of life by improving the work/life balance, equal rights etc. cant fix this with just money.