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Recently, in response to the declining birthrate, the Japanese government announced that it will implement a new policy called the "Child Care Support Fund" from 2026. The policy requires all employees who need to pay public health insurance to contribute an additional amount of money to a fund every month based on their annual income to support childcare, maternity allowance and other related benefits. This move has sparked widespread discussion and controversy in Japanese society.
According to the policy, the payment of this fee will be determined according to the annual income of the employee, and the higher the annual income, the higher the amount of payment. In fiscal 2026, for example, a person with an annual income of 2 million yen will have to pay about 200 yen per month, while a person with an annual income of up to 10 million yen will have to pay about 1,000 yen. By fiscal 2028, this fee will increase and may reach up to 1,650 yen per month.
In addition to office workers, self-employed people who are enrolled in National Health Insurance will also be taxed according to their income. This means that all individuals who are required to contribute to health insurance, regardless of whether they have children or not, will contribute to childcare benefits.
The Japanese government hopes to alleviate the disparity in household burdens through tax adjustments. The policy consideration is that many singles with better economic conditions have no family burden, and their disposable income is relatively generous compared with those with children.
Japanese netizens believe that this is essentially a "single tax", because after the money is paid, only child-rearing families will benefit, and single people are equivalent to giving it for nothing.
It is not a one-day problem that Japan is facing a serious problem of declining birthrate. Japan's total fertility rate has remained low below 1.6 since the 90s, and the number of newborns in 2022 fell below 800,000, a record low. The Japanese government urgently needs to take effective measures to encourage and increase fertility.
Fertility anxiety and life stress that are prevalent in modern Japanese society. Masahiro Yamada, the author of "The Low Fertility Trap" and a well-known Japanese sociologist, believes that the fundamental reason why young people are reluctant to have children or even associate with the opposite sex is the psychology of "not wanting to fall from the current standard of living to worse".
Back on the mainland, they also face demographic challenges with declining birth rates:
The number of births in China is on a downward trend
From 2010 to 2016, the number of newborns in mainland China has been on the rise, but since 2017 it has begun to decline, and there is a low fertility rate. According to statistics, the number of newborns in mainland China in 2019 was 14.65 million. Preliminary data shows that the number of births in mainland China in 2020 was about 12 million, a significant decrease from 2019.
The main reason for the decline in the number of marriages in China
With the rapid development of society, the values and lifestyles of the new generation of young people are undergoing profound changes. On the one hand, they pursue independence and freedom, believing that marriage may become a constraint to some extent. This is particularly true for the group of only children, who have a strong sense of self and tend to prioritize personal growth and development, in contrast to the selfless dedication of the previous generation. Since they have witnessed since they were young that their parents were often bound by the family after marriage and lost some of their right to self-choose, they saw marriage as a relationship that required compromise, which was not easy for them to accept with a strong sense of self.
On the other hand, the high cost of marriage and childbirth is also an important factor hindering young people from realizing their dreams of having a family. China's rapid economic growth in recent decades has led to consumption upgrades, especially in large cities, where high housing prices and huge costs for raising children have discouraged many young people. These realities have made them wary of starting a family and raising children, and some have even chosen to postpone or abandon this life plan.
Gender structure of the population
A balanced population society is an important factor for sustainable development, and the imbalance of population and gender structure has become a prominent problem in building a balanced population society.
According to the results of the Seventh National Population Census, the sex ratio of the total population of the mainland (males to females based on a benchmark of 100 females) is currently 105.07, which is basically the same as in 2010, but slightly lower. It is worth noting that the sex ratio at birth has dropped from the high level in 2010 to 111.3, a decrease of 6.8, indicating that the gender structure of the mainland population is continuing to improve. Looking back at the results of the first to seventh censuses, it is clear that the current sex ratio has reached its lowest value in more than 50 years.
Liang Jianzhang, a population economist, has proposed a subsidy policy aimed at encouraging family births. For families with two children, he suggested that the government should give a monthly cash subsidy of 1,000 yuan per child to ease the financial burden of these families, so as to motivate more families to choose to have a second child. For families with many children, Liang Jianzhang further proposed to increase the monthly subsidy to 2,000 yuan per child, and this subsidy will continue to be paid until the child reaches the age of 20. Such subsidy policies are intended to further encourage families to increase their willingness to have children through economic incentives, thereby boosting population growth.
Dong Yu, a population expert and special researcher of the Counsellors' Office of the Guangdong Provincial Government, pointed out that having one child is the basic plan for maintaining sustainable population growth and has a crucial impact on the fertility level of the whole society. If the number of one-child births continues to decline, it will have a negative impact on future population growth. Therefore, the government should take measures to encourage one-child births, so as to consolidate the base of one-child births.
In recent years, the proportion of elderly pregnant women in mainland China has gradually increased, and at the same time, data released by the National Health Commission show that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the number of women aged 20-34 has decreased by an average of 3.4 million per year, and by 2020, it will decrease by 3.66 million year-on-year. In response to this trend, Wang Jianliu, vice president of Peking University People's Hospital and director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, emphasized the importance of popularizing science. It is pointed out that in order to better understand and cope with fertility problems for the majority of women, it is necessary to integrate scientific methods into women's daily life to reduce their fertility pressure and worries, so as to enhance women's confidence in marriage and childbearing at the right age.
Prospective Economist APP Information Group
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