Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate
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Probably free daycare and relaxing immigration would be best to increase population
France has a subsidy program for kids. It's not helping much. Current fertility rate is 1.85 (2.1 is breakeven).
The only thing that seems to work is a religion that keeps women home pumping out babies and taking care of them. Islam and Haredi Judaism do that. There's a Christian "quiverfull" movement in the US, but it's not big enough to matter.[1]
The issue is non-market housing used to be roughly 30% of the renting market, applying downward pressure on rent prices and thus, house prices. It's now less than 20%, with 95% being 'HLMs' (and a big part of those were from 'loi Pinel' that ended this year). We need to get back to a high percentage of non-market housing.
My father used to be the co-director of a 'chantier d'insertion' where he was teaching basic woodworking/painting/construction/DYI and also artistic skills to people (mostly men) outside of the workforce (from the 16yo dropout to the 54yo ex-farmer), and they did own a few buildings they restored, to help house everyone (they also had people teaching mechanics, electric, plumbing, gardening btw). The local city council changed it's political side, the initiative was shut down and the non-market houses bidded on. The GDP of our city that year probably skyrocketed.
PS: not on the subject: he still had time to clean up an ex-slaughterhouse with his guys, and organize an art exposition inside, with 'mort aux vaches' tagged outside with blood-looking paint, which, considering the new mayor was from a military family, had a not subtle double meaning.
Industrialized and highly educated populations will not go back to 2.1 and higher, it just doesn't work like that in the current social environment.
paid for by the people who don't have kids
not very different than just giving out cash or tax credits
The birth rate is declining faster than expected across the whole world. There aren’t going to be enough young migrants to go around and keep pumping up the numbers.
Funnily enough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Heroine was reinstated in 2022. Russia's current birthrate is ~1.5. Ukraine has something similar as well, they're doing quite poorly, even before their war at ~1.3.
My radical take on all this birthrate stuff is that the single most effective way to boost the birthrate is to entice boredom in any way you can. The internet was a great invention, but the great cost was our attention. It's likely out of the bag that we can't revert to a minimally networked world though. I would (and do) certainly fight against attempts to ruin the internet myself.
Even if one tries to apply first principles it's not something that can be derived easily to hold your statement as fact.
I didn't want any child, but clearly stated that I would support any choice she made, and any children we would have would have my love and support. I don't bear any social pressure to have kids, I don't get pregnant, i don't feel any kind of desire to have children (I used to be a youth camp counselor, my ego about being a role model was well filled by the time I was 25).
Anyway, since the choice is primarily on the mother (as it should be), it stands within reason that the formation and remuneration are given to them in priority.
In my opinion the issue is social, and it’s this: kids are essential to society but, these days, non-parents have little to no experience with kids. They’re entirely unfamiliar with even basic child physiology and psychology or the requirements of adequate childcare at different ages.
Two top-of-mind examples of this manifesting, in my opinion:
- When someone calls into work and says “I can’t come to work today because my kid is sick, I need to reschedule or hand off all my meetings” do they hear “no problem, thanks for being a parent?” or “can you join for just a little bit?” (“I would very much prefer that, but I don’t think you’ll like having a wailing kid on the call. Where would my kid be while I’m joined? Realistic suggestions only, please.”)
Since I should probably make my comment relevant to TFA: most daycares do not allow you to bring your kid if they’re sick. So free daycare doesn’t at all ameliorate this very common and very stressful problem.
- At the beginning of Covid, Google gave extra leave to parents, and non-parents were up in arms (including on HN IIRC. I’ll see if I can find the thread). How about, you can have extra leave if you spend it caring for kids, since the schools are closed, so there’s a shortage of childcare, which is a society-wide problem. I’m confident you’ll find that programming computers is an easier way to contribute in this crisis.
Only the super wealthy and those with no money at all are reproducing above replacement levels, and I'm here to watch as the urban "economic growth at the expense of everything else" culture consumes itself into non-existence in a generation or two.
The "people are selfish" is what drives everything, ultimately. If they find no good reason to have kids, and can have a comfortable and satisfying life in other ways, they will.
"Kids are hard. People are selfish." - More people than ever before want to live a life free of the responsibilities of having children, which is totally fine but never gets talked about in this discussion about birthrate. I have a lot of financially secure friends who never want kids.
"The dating market is torture." - Expectations of dating, especially online dating are very different from previous generations and kind of wack. I admit to falling into the trap of feeling like someone else out there is better and not giving the person I met online more of a chance past the first date. I'm sure others who I was with had the same reaction. Next thing you know, you're past the age of wanting or even being able to have a child. Either way, it's crazy when you see online discussions about how such and such city has a dearth of good matches which seems statistically improbable.
When I ask my cousins and siblings why they don't want to have the kids the opinions range from too much of a restriction to my freedoms, too expensive, too much work, it'll ruin my body.
These area all valid reasons and in fact it was a tough sell for my wife and I to convince ourselves whether even we should have children. I'm glad I did, but I had no idea how much work it takes and I honestly would not judge anyone who opts-out of having them - but...it does mean we face demographic collapse and free child care is just not enough.
Give young families cheaper homes, cheaper college education and have a cultural shift which values having a child as much as a career if not more so and maybe we'll start to see things change.
Being up a 4am to greet my wife who's been up since 1am with a screaming child. I'm not sure exactly what kind of benefits could convince us that he needs siblings :)
Just saying, that while I certainly applaud the effort. I don't see any easy ways to fix the issue: kids are hard work, there are many other things you could do with your life.
Source: I am a father of two daughters with less than 2 years difference; and my brother is also less than 2 years apart from me. So, I lived my advice in both aspects: as a parent and as a child.
I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
(To be fair, I have 3 kids and totally get why your scenario might lower the odds. I'll say that even with the 1am wakeups, the "I love you!" from a toddler is one of the best feelings ever.)
Maybe they weren’t fine with it. They just didn’t have any other choice. Now we do, and turns out a lot of people choose not to have kids when given the choice.
Honestly, I think we will have a rough couple generations, then nature will take its course and humans will reach a new equilibrium that factors in birth control.
How about we make it easier for people who want kids to have them, and we stop vilifying people who don’t want kids?
There are many ways to contribute to society. Some of the kindest most selfless people I know don’t want kids. It’s fine, humanity will manage.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982392 (citations)
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/the-exp...
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-...
> Stunning stat: 64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men. (US specific survey data)
Life as a non-parent has gotten much better, especially for high earners.
Compare this to even just 50 years ago. These options were limited to the highest classes of society. People tended to settle down and have children because that was the sensible next thing to do in life.
Some have them, many are not.
https://www.voronoiapp.com/demographics/Over-Half-of-Househo...
I know multiple single people in their 50s and 60s with no kids and they are all miserable human beings.
Another issue is that most of your peers at that age are raising a family and have less time to get together, making it very lonely. If you wait long enough, your friends will retire/kids will move out and they will have time for you again.
This doesn't even include the elderly people with no kids that end up alone in a nursing home one day.
I know a few people in the 50s and 60s with no kids and they are perfectly nice and happy. I also know parents who are real shit bags. Let’s stop this false narrative that people without kids are miserable or selfish or evil in some way. We are all just people, kids or no.
it's objectively hard work that nowadays may not even pay off at all, aside from this feelings part, which to me always has been balanced out with acute paranoia about being responsible for a fragile live human.
My parents grew up spending a lot of time with their aunts and uncles. I grew up with my parents because they didn't have extended family or friends that could help. Now my generation, I see at least more "family circles" sharing in child care (eg Friday sleepovers at one rotating family, so the other parents can go out). I can't imagine how easy it would be if more grandparents were nearby.
Plus it was just cheaper to live back then. Now the norm is both parents work full time to stay barely above water economically, maximizing shareholder value.
Because by and large our female ancestors raised the children, were offered no choice in whether to raise the children, and their opinions of the situation were not recorded.
Maybe, we are treated better than our ancestors. Most certainly this was the case for women.
(To be clear, I'm not saying that kids isn't worth it, just that it's hard for a government service to move the needle)
The most fascinating part of this is that, against income, fertility is a bathtub-shaped curve. The poorest and richest have the most kids, which the middle class drags the whole nation down.
I get the feeling many have this idea that the more educated /career-oriented you are, the more you delay kids or have less of them. But that is not the case, past a certain point. Look up any of your favorite elite celebrities for example and how many kids they have. They might never talk about them, but I’d bet most of who you look up have 3+
We don't have family to support us and we can't afford childcare. So, that's our situation. Not complaining, just saying - it's not weeks of a little bit less sleep. It's chronically interrupted sleep for months, maybe years (according to Dr. Ferber), with severe affects to hormonal regulation and mood and weight.
Congestion with those little pipe things that you can used to suck the snot out of the baby’s nose.
We never used a pacifier. The baby slept in the same room and my wife nursed her for three years.
Until this, people would dedicate their lives to their kids, children were the most important thing in people’s lives, everything from friends, to outings, to day to day life, would revolve around the child’s best interests and wants.
I’m not sure why this link broke, across every major country. Was it the internet ? What was it, even people from less fortunate backgrounds are having fewer kids, like a LOT LESS, what changed, its not about religion, even the religious are having fewer kids (more than non-religious) but still fewer,
It’s truly a big question, my guess is it has something to do with, increasing the avg age of marriage by 10 yrs from 20 to 30, and making pre-marital sex available in-cheap for everyone, before you’d need to get married to be able to sleep with the opposite gender.
I don’t think the burden of children is experienced only financially. I suspect at least some people are choosing sleep, peace, and freedom over children. Not [primarily] luxury goods.
Is this actually true? I don’t really believe it. Sending your kids to work in the sweatshops doesn’t seem like “best interests and wants.” I think people were just surviving in their time/environment. Like we are now.
It is true in Asian countries and most pre-industrialised nations
Nowadays it’s basically just sub-Saharan Africa keeping the global birth rate up. Even India may now have just dropped below 2.1 along with nearly all of South East Asia.
The birth rate problem in the developed economies is not just a Japanese problem, but if this biased view is true, more generally accurate, it cannot help: Why would you want to have kids, if its a shit experience?
Free daycare is sensible but I suspect they will have to start 9 months back in the flow pipe, and also do some things around labour laws for return-to-work.
I also have friends who had such bad experiences in the west to the point they ended up going with home birth...
From my experience talking to people, the reason for the low birth rate here is the same as in any other country.
Everyone I know who gave birth in the netherlands commented on the low levels of pain relief available!
Our society has lived off the free labor of women and has gotten lazy and thankless.
A few of the leftish parties in Japan decentralization policies as part of their platform, and indeed much of the LDP's support comes from rural constituencies so you'd think they'd be in favor of it. But economic incentives for childrearing sometimes find themselves at odds with conservative mores around family roles and employment.
> June 2024: Japan’s total fertility rate hit a new low of 1.20 in 2023, with the rate for Tokyo falling to 0.99 for the first time.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/asia/tokyo-government-4-day-w...
> December 2024: Tokyo government gives workers 4-day workweek to boost fertility, family time