Japan’s latest plan to reverse declining birthrate

The Japanese government is to discuss new plans to tackle the country’s declining birthrates, including extending public health insurance coverage for childbirths.

The Tokyo government has said they are also considering options that include introducing a set price for medical bills and delivery support at hospitals and other facilities, reported The Japan Times.

The proposal arrives as Japan is experiencing record lows for year-end birth rates. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry recently announced the number of newborn Japanese babies in 2023 was 727,277, down 5.6 percent (43,482 births) from 2022. This has been part of a trend which has seen the number of children born in Japan fall every year since 2015.

If this trend continues, Japan’s current population of more than 125 million people is projected to fall by about 30 to 87 million by 2070, with around four out of every 10 people being 65 years of age or older, according to The Associated Press.

The Japanese government is now discussing introducing plans to fold childbirth costs in with public medical insurance in order to help encourage people to have children by 2026.

Child care is currently not covered under the Japanese medical insurance system as it is not considered an illness. Insurance is only covered for deliveries which involve procedures such as cesarean sections.

The set costs for childbirth care will also help cover discrepancies between various payments in different parts of the country.

In the capital of Tokyo, the average cost is reportedly around 600,000 yen ($3,838). In Kumamoto, a city on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu, the average childbirth cost is 360,000 yen.

The overall population of the East Asian country—the number of births subtracted by the number of deaths—also fell by 848,659 people in 2023, the largest decline ever recorded.

The number of children a woman is expected to have during her lifetime also hit a record low of 1.20 in 2023, compared to 1.33 in 2020 and 1.45 in 2015.

After the latest update in Japan was released, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the country is in a “critical situation” and that the next six years will be “the last chance for us to possibly reverse the trend” of declining birth rates and population.

Hayashi told reporters that the government is working on measures such as increasing income for younger generations and offering support for households with young children.

Takahide Kiuchi, an executive economist at Nomura Research Institute think tank, said the plans to increase medical pay or offer more financial benefits for families will not sufficiently address the issue.

“Simple economic measures such as [an] increase of subsidies are not going to resolve the serious problem of declining births,” Kiuchi wrote in an analysis report.