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Comment by seandoe | Hacker News Reader

Make having kids a zero-cost endeavor. If that doesn't do it, make it a profitable one. It's as simple as that.

Children cost hundred's of thousands of dollars to raise, and that doesn't even count the opportunity cost of your own career progression as you have to spend a year of sleepless nights and possibly have one or both parents reduce their work hours to care for the child.

The Japanese government already struggles to pay out pensions with its aging population, healthcare and pension costs are both rising, where do you propose the money for this comes from?

Should the government increase its already high tax rate from up-to-50% to up-to-90% and take money from the childless to give to parents?

Should the government replace your salary if you quit your job to raise a kid (since after-all that is a cost of the endeavor)?

If you're just talking about "giving birth", I assure you the cost to give birth is already close to free, the government already covers that, and various cities have local parent stipends which make it "profitable" in a sense.

But the real cost of giving birth is not the giving birth, it's the millions of yen you then need to spend over the next 18 years to raise and educate the child, not to mention the cost of possibly dying during childbirth.

> Should the government increase its already high tax rate from up-to-50% to up-to-90% and take money from the childless to give to parents?

Yes

> Should the government replace your salary if you quit your job to raise a kid (since after-all that is a cost of the endeavor)?

Yes

> If you're just talking about "giving birth", I assure you the cost to give birth is already close to free, the government already covers that, and various cities have local parent stipends which make it "profitable" in a sense.

Yes and no. There are a zillion different support programs where you have to fill out a 4 page form in triplicate and submit to city hall to get $80 3 months later. Childbirth is induced regardless of medical necessity because there's one programme that covers medical costs up to the scheduled due date and another programme that covers medical costs after birth, but if you need medical care after your due date with the baby still unborn then you fall through the cracks. The country badly needs to replace its patchwork subsidy program with simply including childbirth under normal medical insurance.

I will fight tooth and nail against this. Immigrants are WAY more economically efficient than children.

> Immigrants are WAY more economically efficient than children.

In Japan? Doubt. The social cost may be harder to measure, but it's huge.

And even if they are more "economically efficient", why is that the goal?

Are you suggesting that a newborn human has more positive economic impact than an immigrant? What factors are you considering?

> Are you suggesting that a newborn human has more positive economic impact than an immigrant? What factors are you considering?

I'm suggesting they have a more positive lifetime impact yes. Obviously publicly-funded education, healthcare and the like for the newborn until they're ready to contribute financially has a cost, but an immigrant is just massively disruptive - language support in public services alone is a significant cost, but much larger is losing the benefits of a cohesive, high-trust society. If the neighbourhood's kids can no longer run errands alone but now need (or are felt to need) an adult escorting them, you're going to get mothers quitting their jobs to do that; if an unattended shop is no longer viable then those businesses will close; if every business switches to payment in advance because they can no longer trust people to pay their bills then that's a whole lot of friction that slows down all economic activity...

This touches on a core part of this. Don't think about it from a money point of view but form a labor/time point of view.

There is just not enough labor/time for people to have kids and also sustain the elderly that can no longer contribute to the same degree.

No, slash the entitlements, children become the pension. You can’t solve this with taxes because those come from the youth anyway.

It is not as simple as that. In my country giving birth is free. And you get economic support for every child. For most people it's still an economic burden to some extent, but for the majority it's not something which blocks them from having children. It's more that most families I know are content with having two children. It feels fine to them. But that's the families that do have children. 25% of men in my country never have children. It's not enough. A lot of families need to produce 3 children, and better if there are some with four.. and most people simply don't want that. And that's for the most part not a question of economy.

And there are the increasing infertility rates as well to hamper the efforts.

Personally, I would love to have a few kids but after many years of trying and all manner of treatments we have gotten nowhere at all. But that is just how if falls I guess.

It is as simply as that. Economic support you mentioned is never enough to cover basic needs. Better than nothing, but still require to sacrifice a lot to have an extra kid.

More kids means you need a bigger house, bigger car, extra furniture, a part time job for mother to manage kids.

I specifically mentioned families where the economy is not a burden, and they still don't want many children. Very few will want more than two. Please note that in my country at least, as long as the economy is good enough that there aren't any real problems living, then it doesn't matter if it costs more with more children. That is not the reason.

> It's as simple as that.

Not really. Cultural values is a huge factor, and that was seriously upended when the US invaded and occupied them.

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