Policies supporting children and child-rearing

Based on the idea of the child allowance as a basic kind of financial assistance supporting the rearing of all children, who hold the next generation’s future in their hands, we will eliminate the income restrictions and extend the period for payments until the child reaches the age of a high school student. In concrete terms, to all households raising children, we will pay a monthly amount of 15,000 yen for children up to the age of three, and then 10,000 yen for children from age three to high school age. Moreover, because the need for financial assistance is high for households with multiple children, we will pay a monthly amount of 30,000 yen for the third child and each child afterward.

From the 2023 fiscal year, we have increased the Childbirth Lump-Sum Allowance substantially, from 420,000 yen to 500,000 yen. We also provide subsidies to cover the cost of the first obstetric consultation for pregnant women with low incomes. In addition, we will put the costs of childbirth into a format that can easily be assessed, and we will move forward with our consideration of having insurance cover childbirth expenses, aiming to have such coverage begin in 2026.

One major reason mentioned for people not having the number of children they would ideally like to have is the burden of education expenses. Accordingly, we will work to reduce the burden of higher education costs, which is regarded as an issue of particular urgency.
In concrete terms, from fiscal 2024, recipients of tuition fee reductions and grant-type scholarships will be expanded to middle-class students from households with three or more children and middle-class students studying science, engineering, or agriculture. Based on the state of implementation, our fiscal resources, and other factors, we will also consider a further expansion of assistance for tuition fee reductions and other initiatives for university students from households with three or more children and take necessary measures accordingly. Moreover, at the master’s stage of graduate school, we will give further consideration to the establishment, and then full-scale introduction, of a system for paying tuition fees later on in life.
Furthermore, we will expand the reduced payment system of loan-type scholarships by increasing the flexibility of the annual income requirements, so that people do not hesitate to get married, have a child, or raise a child because they are burdened with repaying those scholarships.

To make it possible for second income earners to work without worrying about earning more than what are called the “annual income barriers” of 1.06 and 1.30 million yen, we will work to expand employee insurance coverage to workers with fixed-term employment contracts while also working to raise the minimum wage. Alongside that, within 2023 we will decide upon and implement stopgap response measures to ensure that take-home pay does not end up decreasing once an employee newly surpasses the 1.06 million yen barrier. We will conduct a review of the system.

As many have said that housing is an issue for households raising children, we will strengthen our support for housing that is compatible with raising children.
Over the next decade, we will make use of public housing and vacant houses to prepare approximately 300,000 units of housing oriented towards households raising children. Alongside this, in order to lighten the interest burden when households raising children and others acquire high-quality housing, we will at the earliest possible time in fiscal 2024 dramatically enhance our support for housing, making use of a point system to provide preferential 35-year fixed-interest rates, giving particular attention to multi-child households who need more spacious homes.

To ensure that all pregnant women and households raising children are able to have children and raise them with peace of mind, we will enhance our “escort runner-type” consultation support.
We will arrange three face-to-face talks within the mother’s municipality of residence, namely (1) at the time of notifying the authorities of the pregnancy, (2) at roughly 8 months into the pregnancy, and (3) after the birth of the child. Upon the first and third consultations, the mother will receive gifts equivalent to 100,000 yen in total value.
Also, from the perspective of reducing the physical and mental burdens shouldered by households raising children before and after childbirth, we will work to strengthen the system for providing postnatal care services.

Our promotion of measures to deal with childcare waiting lists has resulted in a certain degree of success in expanding the amount of childcare available. From now, we will shift the emphasis of our policies from expanding the amount to increasing the quality.
Specifically, we will improve the staffing criteria so that one childcare provider will be responsible for five one-year-olds instead of six, and 25 four- and five-year-olds instead of 30. In addition, we will work to improve the treatment of childcare providers and others.

In order to strengthen the support provided to all households raising children, we will establish a system under which all children are able to attend daycare centers and nursery schools. Families will be able to make use of this system flexibly, on a time unit basis, regardless of whether or not the parents are working. We will expand our model operations within the 2023 fiscal year and we will work to institutionalize it from fiscal 2024.

In order to bring about a society in which no one is left behind, we will develop systems for providing comprehensive assistance within each local area. We will put this into concrete form within 2023 in the process of formulating our General Principles for Child-Related Measures and aim to boost our assistance measures earlier than originally planned.

To build momentum for society as a whole providing support for children and households raising children, we have launched measures that include setting up dedicated lanes for pregnant women and people accompanied by children and providing information for them on a priority basis so that they will have an easier time while waiting in line at counters. We have also begun setting off open spaces inside of public transportation for people using baby strollers, and we will work to make widespread this change in our way of thinking that will help to foster a society sympathetic to children and to child-rearing. Moreover, we have set in motion an initiative in which companies, individuals, local governments, and others that agree with the idea of “Kodomo Mannnaka,” a society in which the interests of children take center stage, declare themselves as Kodomo Mannnaka supporters, put into practice steps that can be taken immediately, and announce the steps they have taken on social media and elsewhere.
In addition, recently we held a kick-off event for Kodomo Mannnaka actions, where we declared the full-fledged launch of our efforts to change people’s way of thinking to foster a society that accommodates children and child-rearing, and from now we will be expanding these actions to realize a society where children’s interests take center stage.

In order to make fundamental changes to the culture and atmosphere of the workplace and enable both men and women to take childcare leave as they wish without hesitation, we will significantly raise the target we have set for the percentage of people taking childcare leave, aiming to have 85 percent of men taking childcare leave in 2030.
We will have companies compile their efforts into a form that can be readily assessed through corporate documents available to the public and other means. We will also expand subsidy measures covering such things as the payment of support allowances to employees who act in the stead of other staff taking childcare leave and institute a system in which the companies most enthusiastically promoting the taking of childcare leave receive more assistance.

To encourage both parents to take childcare leave, we will raise the benefit rate from 80 percent to 100 percent of take-home pay when childcare leave is taken by both men and women during a certain period right after childbirth. We aim to implement this beginning in fiscal 2025.

To enable parents to pursue career development simultaneously with child-rearing, we will establish a system in which, to help both the parents and the children, workers can choose their own work styles. Under this system, parents of children aged three or older, until the child enters elementary school, will be able to select flexible work styles that include working a reduced number of hours, teleworking, working under flextime, or taking leave.

We will establish a subsidy making it possible to work fewer hours while caring for small children. This will be available to both men and women who work a reduced schedule so that raising a child and household responsibilities can be shared without the amount of take-home pay changing. We aim to launch this beginning in fiscal 2025.

By fiscal 2028, we will conduct a thoroughgoing reform of our expenditures and make the greatest possible use of the existing budget. We aim to avoid giving rise to any additional financial burdens in real terms. We will work to secure funding through spending reforms and other means and strengthen our socioeconomic foundations. Within that context, we will build a new framework (tentatively named the Support Fund System) in which all participants in society and the economy, including companies, will act in solidarity, taking on the burden broadly, in a fair manner. We will release the results of our deliberations on the specifics of this framework at the end of 2023. As we implement our assistance measures with a sense of speed, we will make use of special government bonds for child-related matters when necessary to cover funding shortfalls that will arise from the fact that our spending reforms will take several years to complete.

The scale of the Acceleration Plan budget is roughly 3 trillion yen at present. Furthermore, within the upcoming budget formulation process, we will consider expanding our measures, strengthening the overall budget to roughly 3.5 trillion yen. By implementing the Acceleration Plan, if we look at family-related expenditures per child, our budget for child and child-rearing is at a level reaching that of Sweden, which ranks at the very top of OECD countries. Also, by implementing the Acceleration Plan in its current form, the budget for the Agency for Children and Families is expected to increase by roughly 50 percent. We aim to double the budget of the Agency by the early 2030s.