Japan's health ministry is set to eliminate out-of-pocket payments associated with child delivery, possibly from April next year, to address the country's declining birthrate.
Yeah, Japan is notoriously deep in a hole about that: the total lack of child care support has long been identified as a major drive for all the gender inequalities they have (employment high up above everything else, then salary), which is super bad. There have been talks about something like child care for a few years, and apparently only now they’re actually doing it - they’ve been extra dragging their feet for a long time, and if they’re doing it now, it’s only because they finally accepted that their known demographics disaster will not be miraculously fixed by checks notes doing nothing. Hell must be freezing over right now.
Yeah, Japan is notoriously deep in a hole about that: the total lack of child care support has long been identified as a major drive for all the gender inequalities they have (employment high up above everything else, then salary), which is super bad. There have been talks about something like child care for a few years, and apparently only now they’re actually doing it - they’ve been extra dragging their feet for a long time, and if they’re doing it now, it’s only because they finally accepted that their known demographics disaster will not be miraculously fixed by checks notes doing nothing. Hell must be freezing over right now.