After doubling defence budget, Japan will spend twice that on making babies 

Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced plans to spend twice the country’s defence budget to support young couples who wish to have babies in a bid to tackle Japan’s dramatic population decline.

Kishida said that he will spend 20 trillion Yen on ‘baby boom’ measures, including “marriage support concierges” – a service where people are tasked with offering help and counselling to couples, according to Telegraph.

The measures would account for four per cent of Japan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as compared to the country’s defence budget which is set to reach only two per cent of Japan’s GDP by 2027.

What are the other measures?

The Japanese government is preparing to launch a new Children and Families Agency to provide support to those who want to get married and have children.

Seiko Noda, the minister who has been given the responsibility to launch the measures, said, “The Agency should make people believe that it is good to have and raise children in this country.”

Under the new measures, the government will offer tax breaks to families with more than two children and guarantee places at day-care facilities for working parents.

Having a baby is not cheap but the Japanese government has a solution for it too. Soon-to-be-parents in the country will be given greater financial assistance to cover the costs of raising a child.

In addition to this, the parental leave system will be improved to create a more acceptable work environment for people who have children.

Japan’s population drop

For over two years, from 2020 to 2021, the country suffered a massive population drop, according to official data released by the government. It is expected to plunge even further from its current 125 million to an estimated 88 million in 2065.

According to The Guardian, the birth rate in the Asian country remains severely low with just 811,604 births recorded in 2021, the lowest since 1899. In contrast to this figure, the number of centenarians stands at more than 90,500 – compared with only 153 in 1963.

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