Why the tears? Perhaps this baby doesn't yet know that Japan's new government will offer monthly stipends to families with children, an attempt to stem the country's low birth rate problem. (Yuriko Nakao/Reuters)

Cash for kids in Japan

Share on Facebook StumbleUpon Add to Reddit Print Version Email Article

A new government addresses a low birth rate problem with cold, hard cash.

By David Nakamura — Special to GlobalPost

Published: September 16, 2009 05:38 ET

TOKYO, Japan — In the country with the lowest birth rate in the world, the newly empowered Democratic Party of Japan has proposed a solution: pay to procreate.

As part of the manifesto that helped the DPJ rout the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party in last month’s election, families will receive 26,000 yen (about $280) per month for each child through junior high school.

“We could use the money; it would help us manage,” said Jun Otake, a human resources manager at Japan Airlines who stands to receive $840 per month for his three young daughters. “People need help regardless of the number of children, but obviously more children mean more mouths to feed.”

Otake, 41, should know. He and wife Yuki are raising their daughters, ages 11, 7 and 2, in an 800-square foot apartment with two bedrooms and a single bathroom that Jun, as the only man in the house, finds ever-more frequently off limits.

To support this modest lifestyle, Jun commutes to work 90 minutes each way from the Tokyo suburb of Fujisama, not arriving home until midnight. Yuki, who gave up her own career 12 years ago, juggles the care of the girls. Their only time together on weekdays comes during mandatory 7 a.m. family breakfast.

It isn’t easy to raise children in Japan, where the birth rate of 1.37 children per woman has fallen well below the replacement level of 2.07 and contributed to structural problems facing the world’s fastest-aging society. The reasons cited are myriad: the cost of schooling, a lack of daycare options and an increasing number of women unwilling to interrupt or forego their careers among them.

But the new measure, which mirrors similar programs in other countries (France, for example, for years has heavily subsidized the cost of raising children), is not without its critics.

The child stipend plan — part of the DPJ’s populist agenda that includes making high school education free and removing tolls on highways — has been criticized by economists who question whether the $54 billion program, which costs more than the country’s defense budget, is affordable. Furthermore, women without children wonder if the money would be better spent on increasing the number of day care centers and other methods to help women return to work after giving birth.

“The child allowance is not a fundamental solution,” said Vivian Tokai, 41, director of government relations at an international conglomerate who is married but has no children. She and her husband, a marketing executive at a Japanese brewery, live in Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood, where waiting lists for public day care facilities are long.

Comments:

1 Comments.

Posted by david wayne osedach on September 16, 2009 12:00 ET

It will be interesting to see if this theory - cash for kids - produces the desired results. I think the reason the Japanese birthrate is so low has more do do than just money.

Recent on Japan :

Latest

Silicon Sweatshops: A promising model

Jonathan Adams and Kathleen E. McLaughlin - China and its neighbors - November 18, 2009 06:54 ET

There's no easy way to police supply chains in Asia. But one US high-tech firm and its Taiwan supplier are taking a creative approach that might just work.

Special report: Silicon Sweatshops

Jonathan Adams and Kathleen E. McLaughlin - China and its neighbors - November 17, 2009 15:05 ET

Despite strict "codes of conduct," labor rights violations are the norm at factories making the world's favorite high-tech gadgets.

What do you think about Silicon Sweatshops?

News Desk - China and its neighbors - November 17, 2009 15:04 ET

Are high-tech supply chains in Asia good business or exploitation? You decide.

Silicon Sweatshops: Shattered dreams

Jonathan Adams - China and its neighbors - November 17, 2009 07:24 ET

Migrant workers making gadgets at Taiwan's high-tech parks sign deals that make them modern-day indentured servants.

Silicon Sweatshops: The China connection

Kathleen E. McLaughlin and Jonathan Adams - China and its neighbors - November 17, 2009 07:22 ET

For migrant workers, an electronics factory job can be a ticket into China's booming middle class. But for many, it turns into a nightmare of poor working conditions and indifferent bosses.