Government Decides on Measures against the Declining Birthrate; Expands Child Allowance for Children under 3
On the 20th, the government compiled “New Measures against the Declining Birthrate,” with a target horizon of about the next 5 years. A distinctive feature is that the period from fetal development through university is divided into four stages, with support measures tailored to children’s growth. The package includes increased child allowances for infants and toddlers and enhanced scholarships for junior-high-school students and older. It also points to the need for working arrangements that make it easier to raise children. However, it postponed a conclusion on the necessary funding, saying that concrete details would be considered during work on the next fiscal year’s budget.That morning, the government and ruling parties approved the draft measures against the declining birthrate. In response, the government formally adopted them after the Cabinet meeting at a Council for Measures against a Society with a Declining Birthrate attended by the relevant ministers. It will accelerate consultations among ministries and, in July, incorporate the measures into the “Basic Policies 2006,” while seeking to implement some policies beginning with the next fiscal year’s budget.
The main points of the latest measures include:
・Increasing child allowances during infancy for children under 3
・Reducing the burden of education costs for preschool children through tax incentives
・Correcting excessively long working hours
・Supporting women returning to work after childbirth
・Expanding subsidies for fertility treatment
Why does the government keep devising nothing but stopgap measures like these?
There are various reasons people do not have children.
1) They cannot have children because education costs too much
2) They would like to have this man’s child, but he is already married
(The remaining men are no good.)
3) They want to give birth, but their bodies will not cooperate
4) They cannot have children because giving birth would prevent them from continuing to work
1) They cannot have children because education costs too much
When people say they cannot have children because education costs too much, private education expenses such as cram school are probably a major factor. Even for elementary school students, attending cram school costs 5 to 100,000 per month. This is a heavy burden for most households. Why do they do it? Because they want their children to enter a good university. Moreover, children end up spending their precious childhood learning useless test-taking techniques for that purpose. Because they are taught how to solve problems and save time, they cease to think for themselves.
This situation is not the kind of problem that scholarships or similar measures can solve. There is only one solution: make entrance-exam preparation useless. National universities should admit anyone. In exchange, they should expel 50% each year. Students would then study desperately during their 4 years at university and would probably also develop their innate intellectual ability beforehand.
Furthermore, because public education has collapsed, the tendency to prefer private schools has grown stronger in recent years. Public education itself needs a fundamental overhaul.
2) They would like to have this man’s child, but he is already married
The remaining men are no good.
This is something I often hear from career women around 35. There are 2 solutions to this. One is to abolish monogamy. Most men are worthless. We must acknowledge this. Since the natural course is to preserve only the genes of excellent men, the system must be changed accordingly. To begin with, today’s marriage system and social norms were created from the perspective of curbing population growth at a time when Japan’s population was exploding. They worked extremely well, and now the population has begun to decline. The time has come to revise this population-reduction policy.
3) They want to give birth, but their bodies will not cooperate
4) They cannot have children because giving birth would prevent them from continuing to work
This too is a matter of social norms, but society should encourage people to marry younger. The most suitable age for women to have children is probably around 18 to 25. Yet the average marriage age now exceeds 27 and continues to rise. This too was a population-reduction measure, but everyone seems to have forgotten that. We need to discard this assumption and normalize a path in which women have children at around 20, then complete university and enter the workforce.
We also need to overturn the assumption of roughly the past 60 years that parents raise their children. Originally, the community raised children. Is that not so? Mothers were pregnant throughout the year, so there was no way they could attend to so many children. Grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, older girls in the neighborhood, and everyone else together raised the children. We should return to that model. Doing so would probably also reduce crime and foster richer humanity.
In short, the government should discard every population-reduction policy adopted after the war.
It should fundamentally reform social norms and the structure of society.
Instead, it avoids doing so and tries to adopt subsidies and other stopgap measures.
What is so “robust” about that?