Japan Is So Desperate to Increase Its Birth Rate That Tokyo Is Trying Out a New Idea: Free Daycare
Japan has been grappling with its demographic statistics with a sense of urgency, particularly regarding its declining birth rate. In 2023, the country...
Why is it framed like it's something extreme?
I read it as snark/sarcasm. Like they are adding something that already should be.
This was my reaction also. WoOoAh! Free daycare? How radical!! Haha
Decent first step, but it's going to take an actual investment in making parenthood desirable.
Parenthood is already desirable. There's a biological drive and social conditioning to desire it for most people. The disincentives have just become overwhelming. Children take a hell of a lot of resources. Every aspect of modern society has drained all the time, money, energy, emotional resiliance, social support, etc that people need.
Meh
There are many other social factors that make parenthood undesirable in Japan that this does not address.
Daycare/Kindergarten is already free across the country for all children starting at 3 years old.
All child healthcare is also free after a prefecture-set monthly premium (usually about 1000 yen).
This policy announcement is specifically about making the 0-3 year old gap free.
Honestly I'd rather just see the government pay more into the shakai hoken (the national insurance that pays for mother/father leave) so people can take more time off from work early on in the kids' lives.
Making it easier for parents to go back to work instead of focusing what's good for children and parents seems par for the course.
Daycare/Kindergarten is already free across the country for all children starting at 3 years old.
My information might be biased towards the greater Kanto area (Tokyo/Yokohama), but I'm not aware of anybody paying less then 20000 Yen (a little over $100 USD I guess) per month per child for a place in a public daycare (can be more than double, depending on the area/daycare, and much more for private ones).
It's much more complicated, though. You can receive various support money from the state/prefecture/city, but it's usually less than what you have to pay. And you're not guaranteed a place, and the waiting list cam be long (especially in highly populated areas in Tokyo).
I'm not sure why your friends are paying that... Most cities in Saitama, Chiba, and the 23 wards at least I know that the 学費 was set as 無償化.
There are some instances where you don't qualify for free school if you make too much money. (Or it could just be they didn't have a good guide at the city office to walk them through the maze of beaurocracy)
Also 23 wards and most of the cities in Saitama and Chiba have daycare and kindergarten entry that's points based(the larger cities have more kids than daycare spots, which is my favorite bit of irony about the Japanese birthrate problems), the more points you have (points based on need, like are you a single mother, both parents working full time etc.)
The only solution is to make childcare paid i.e. every single person that has a child gets a stipend worth a full time job.
Because it is a full time job.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, our ponzi scheme is about to enter the find out phase.
Capitalism is totally different from a ponzi scheme. In a ponzi scheme, the profits go up to the person at the top and you always need new people that come in, otherwise the whole thing will fall apart and the people at the bottom will be the ones that suffer. Under capitalism however, the profits of everyone's work will go up to the top and you always need new workers to come in, otherwise the system will fall apart and the people at the bottom will suffer. Totally different.
Hm. There is a difference.
Once crapitalists run out of "new horizons" to "expand" into, they start cannibalizing their current workforce and raise prices while lowering quality for customers.
Do not be fooled. Quality is going down because profits are going up.
Maybe this ponzi. Unfunded state pensions use workers contributions to pay current pensioners.
Less workers = less pensions.
*MarkWahlburg.gif
Wait until they will discover affordable housing thing.
Housing in Tokyo is known for being relatively affordable, actually.
Not in Tokyo, but farther out in Tokyo's residential cities (outside the 23 wards like Chiba and Saitama)
It's even cheaper the farther you get from train stations. There's a 30 minute walk "cliff" where residential land prices plummet when you're more than 30 minutes walk away from a train station.
Wait until you find out it is normal to tip your landlord there
Usually the newer buildings owned by larger real estate groups don't do they kept money thing anymore.
I've only really seen it in buildings owned by small real estate concerns and old dudes.
It's luckily getting kind of pushed out as a normal thing, just slowly.
Housing is pretty affordable in Japan since housing in Japan is not an investment, it depreciates like a car (only the land has value, the house ontop of it has literally negative value since it's assumed anyone will want to bulldoze it), and their lax zoning allows for continual densification to happen.
Also...loosen immigration laws?
I know it's a very closed off nation with deep cultural roots that is very weary of outsiders...
I don't mind finding work in Japan... ...if it wasn't so hostile to workers
So far, Japan is near the bottom of my list for western countries to work at, and I would much rather find a job in Korea instead
That's crazy talk, you'd get lot's of filthy foreigners in that way.
I know it’s a very closed off nation with deep cultural roots that is very weary of outsiders…
Europe doesn't get to use that excuse, and neither should they. I don't care how different whale meat shashimi seems from foi gras, or bonsai from tulip arrangements.
Absolutely! Even if it's unlikely to happen, we shouldn't let that distract us from what the best decisions would be.
What governments and corporations never understand and will never want to understand is that ....
... it isn't about the quantity of life ... or even the quantity of people who are alive or are born
... it's about the quality of life
If everyone lives a comfortable, safe and fulfilling life without risk of poverty or losing everything they have, then they are more likely to have children and raise them to become productive people who will contribute to society.
Otherwise if you don't take care of people, they will either have no children or a bunch of children that will all grow up to become a burden to society.
"Life without risk of poverty"?! That desperation and fear is the only way I can staff my sweatshops!
Maybe we should be less focused on making more people, and more focused on enabling living people to work together to meet each other's needs?
People will have children. But the only thing that pushes the nationalistic desires to have a positive birth rate is the zealotry around eternal 3%+ growth of financial product. That needs a growing consumer base.
We could be achieving an economic degrowth while simultaneously increasing the standard of living. Instead we have tech billionaires, a venture capitalist class, and a war on women's(as well everyone else's) bodily autonomy.
If everyone lives a comfortable, safe and fulfilling life without risk of poverty or losing everything they have, then they are more likely to have children and raise them to become productive people who will contribute to society.
You would assume that, but is it really true? The countries with the safest and most comfortable lives, in Scandinavia, have the lowest birth rates. The countries with the least safe and comfortable lives, in Africa, have the highest birth rates.
Well, countries with higher birthrates have a third option that is essentially negligible in those with lower birthrates, which is not even making it to adulthood. Effectively still less children end up becoming productive members of society. And together with that, due to less available social services, often a goal of having children survive is so they can take care of the parent when they're older.
As soon as infant mortality becomes a non-factor, birthrates decline drastically as well. And since children are no longer largely seen as a "life assurance" for when parents are older, and the society's demands for productive members is higher as well, the focus really does shift to the quality of the life and the two types of reasons to have kids are harder to compare. But even among developed nations you can see differences in fertility rates.
Maybe I'm reading into this wrong, but I think the interpretation of fertility statistics may be underestimating/overlooking how much rape and sexual violence contributes to the high fertility rates we're seeing in impoverished countries struggling with widespread violence.
Countries like the ones in Scandinavia have lower rape statistics and access to abortion which could explain a lot about those numbers and why they are the way they are. Again, it's a just hypothesis, but one worth mentioning I think.
There's a climate catastrophe caused by human overpopulation. How did you miss that?
The climate catastrophe is caused by a hyper-reliance on fossil fuels & deliberately shitty transport infrastructure (i.e. the private automobile & it's consequences), entirely for financial reasons; not just raw numbers of people.
yes. damn. what an idea
four-day workweek
/me franticly googling rents in Japan
The way I've heard it said is "if you live in a developed country, you could probably afford to move to Japan right now. If you get a job in Japan, you'll never afford to move back."
Japan's cost of living is low compared to developed nations, but their average income is also low for a developed nation.
When you move from the US you lose like half your salary for an equivalent position (more now cause of the relative power of the dollar to the yen).
The people that live like kings are the ones that are in Japan at the behest of American companies on American salaries living at like a third of their American costs.
rent is cheapish, it's everything else that will get you. if you're fine with crushing and all-permeating conformism, ridiculous degree of nationalism and misogyny, how you won't be ever accepted as one of their own as foreigner and famously toxic work culture, feel free to give it a shot
They... they could've done this the entire time?
I think they might also need to maybe leave work at a reasonable time.
And not get molested the whole way home by some guy that thinks he's in the old boy's club. And not get fired because they're a married woman now, and need to stay home (literally normal there).
Like, people are losing interest in kids everywhere, but in the core Western countries nobody's nervous to get married because they get socially demoted in the process. That's a theme I've definitely heard from women over there, and probably why it's happening faster.
Affordable housing, better working conditions, less working hours, efficient healthcare and better pay. It's not hard goddamn it.
Nice! really good direction. If this good results I hope more places follow suit.
Childcare is outrageous. Daycare for my two kids was more than my mortgage every month. Ive been counting down until they were eligible for public schools
Unfortunately for many of us Americans, there is a substantial contingent of our government that would really like to do away with public schools.
Damn, in Norway is not free, but both public and private kindergartens (1-6) are capped in terms of what they can bill for each month. Which is about 210usd
The rest is paid for though taxes obviously.
Basically doubles income if it is free.
Japan: Nah, we're good.
Considering the situation they should mave life care, no one wants to have babies there. Raise by social entities
Considering the situation in this country, the government should have gone a step further and implemented a live care system (LIVE care), where children are raised by specialized care organizations.
Decreasing birthrates are a good thing. You can't have unlimited growth
They are definitely not inherently good or bad it depends on the place, but if there is 1 child born per woman in the country, that means the country given enough time will pretty rapidly shrink, unless they change something about people not wanting to have kids or allow immigration
That would be a hit in the US
Fuck this narrative. Decreased birth rates is a major success
Why are you of that opinion? Something like 30% of Japan's population is over 65. Low birth rates are obviously not sustainable for them and will have extreme issues for their country if it continues.
Because it means less people to fuck up the planet.
