Representative Image
Tokyo: Concerned over the low birth rate in the country, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged Friday to implement measures including allowing 85 per cent of male workers who have a child to take paternity leave by fiscal 2030 to tackle the falling birthrate.
The government will take steps to push up wages for young workers and boost economic assistance to them to create an environment conducive to raising their children free of concerns, the Japanese Prime Minister said in a press conference.
The number of babies born in Japan in 2022 fell to a new record low for the seventh consecutive year, dropping below 800,000 for the first time since records began in 1899, government data showed late last month.
This is a worrying trend that has persisted for decades as the country’s population has been in steady decline since its economic boom of the 1980s and stood at 125.5 million in 2021, according to the most recent government figures.
“The young population in Japan will decline at twice the current rate in the 2030s. The next six to seven years will be the last chance to turn around the declining birthrate,” Kishida said.
Expressing eagerness to increase spending to tackle the declining birthrate, Kishida said that focusing on child policies is this year’s most pressing agenda item, but he has stopped short of clarifying how to fund the budget.
The Prime Minister also said that his government will map out a child policy package by the end of March.
According to the data, 85.1 per cent of eligible women in Japan took maternity leave in fiscal 2021 through March 2022 compared to only 13.97 per cent of men who did so.
Japan’s fertility rate of 1.3 is far below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population, in the absence of immigration.
These concerning trends prompted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to say in January that Japan is “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions.”
Japan’s public expenditures related to family support stood at around 10 trillion yen ($75 billion) in fiscal 2020, accounting for 2.01 per cent of the gross domestic product in the year and underscoring that the country has lagged behind developed European economies.
According to data released in fiscal 2018 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo, Sweden spent 3.46 per cent, Britain 2.98 per cent and France 2.81 per cent of their GDPs on child care.
What is intriguing is that the country has decided to roughly double Japan’s defence spending over the next five years and to acquire enemy base strike capabilities to deter attacks in a major shift in security policy amid instability in the region and mounting threats from China.
The government has introduced “unprecedented” measures to counter the country’s declining birthrate, with government ministries and agencies compiling by the end of March an outline on how to proceed with it.
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Health, the number of babies born in Japan in 2022 fell to a new record low for the seventh consecutive year, dropping below 800,000 for the first time since records began in 1899.
The total number of births was down 5.1 per cent to 799,728. The drop comes much earlier than a 2017 government forecast that said births would fall below 800,000 in 2033. While, the number of deaths in Japan in 2022, the figure hit a record high of 1,582,033, up 129,744, according to the data.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.