Japan pays R$3,000 but no use: few want to have children

The Japanese government plans to offer an additional 80,000 yen – the equivalent of R$3,100 – to parents with babies from April 2023. Today, for the birth of a child, those responsible already receive 420,000 yen (about 16.2 thousand BRL). .

The amount does not seem to be enough to convince couples to get pregnant for various reasons. According to the Japanese newspaper Mainichi, the average cost of having a baby in Japan is around 437,000 yen (about R$16,900).

Why don’t couples want to get paid for more children?

• High cost of living in the country
• income stagnation
• Lack of space in kindergartens

Also, one of the main expenses for parents is extra lessons known as juku. They aim to ensure that children go to a good secondary school and then a good university. Higher education in Japan usually takes four years and can drain families’ resources even if the student works part-time.

And with wages virtually unchanged for more than a decade and daily costs rising with inflation, the pressures are greater than ever.

It is not Japan’s first attempt in this direction.

The country has already offered:

• Cars
• Housing in rural areas
• Other cash benefits

As the release of the latest statistics worries the Japanese, the government’s aim is to try to stop the alarming decline in the country’s birth rate. In 2021, there were 125.7 million Japanese in the country – down from the 128 million peak recorded in 2017.

Pre-pandemic estimates by the science journal The Lancet show that Japan’s population should fall to 53 million by the end of the century. In recent years, Japanese people have chosen to marry later and have fewer children – a decision made largely due to economic concerns.

Data from the local Ministry of Health showed that only 384,942 babies were born in the country in the first six months of the year, a 5% decrease from the same period last year.

The folder also predicts that the number of births will be below 811,604 recorded in 2021. And it probably won’t reach the 800k limit. This has never happened since the counting began in 1899.