Japan to boost child care spending to match Sweden – The Mainichi

10 comments

1. Great. We still can’t get a legal marriage in Japan but even more of our tax money will be going to other people’s kids. The government keeps allocating more and more money for having babies but the birth rate keeps falling. It’s like their thinking is, what we’re doing isn’t working so we need to do more of it.

2. Will they do another Check to their friend in maternities like they did when the price of delivering a baby rose magically the day after they announced an increased allowance?

   Make children hassle free, and you’ll see it will solve the issue you want to resolve.

3. Hard enough to raise a kid in this economy. Let us be able to get in daycare and maybe some rent subsidy so we can afford the extra space. Those two things holding my wife and I back from a 2nd.

4. I mean there’s not many children to spend it on

5. All smoke and mirrors if you can’t even say how you’ll pay for it.

6. A little too late I think. Especially if the money doesn’t go where it needs to go and just lines pockets

7. As someone who is currently expecting and going through the hoops of the Japanese system, I’m actually pretty impressed. Not just with the monetary support, which will put our C-section delivery down to barely 200k in a private hospital, but I am also impressed by the counseling my city provides. I currently don’t need those services yet and to others it might just seem like they want to tick the boxes. But where I come from, this is so much more than we get back home.

   We’re not gonna be looking at daycare, but even if we aren’t, my city has been very helpful with looking for one close to our house just in case we wanted to use the service.

8. Part of the reason it costs ( a lot?) to have a kid here is that they keep you in the hospital for a week, all the while taking care of the kid and the mother and providing support from almost every angle. Canada, it’s free, but you sometimes leave the hospital the day you give birth

9. r/capaho I don’t mean to pile on here but I think you’re being downvotes because your logic in your statement about “other people’s kids” is functionally equivalent to the following statements (which I don’t not believe nor condone):

   I don’t drive a car why is my tax money being spent on road repairs

   I don’t have ovaries or breasts why is my tax money being spent on mammogram cancer prevention programs for women

   I’m not gay why is my tax money being spent on legal challenges to change the laws

   Etc etc. tax should be for the public good and society as a whole. Many might say kids are the future of society and therefore a worthwhile investment for the good of society….

   Edit – posted in main instead of reply do t know why

10. Thing is all the spending in Sweden didn’t do much for the birthrate there either. The biggest obstacle to increasing the birthrate is people just don’t want kids.