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Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

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Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#71

Post by yoyohello13 »

jazz9k wrote: post #40
mindwok wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the answer is that there is far more interesting things to do with your life. It's quite easy to imagine a life where you're occupied up to your mid thirties with things like university, starting a career in a field you're actually interested in, maybe moving locations once or twice, travelling, working overseas. This plays out even at the relationship level: people in their 20's are far less committal, and…

I did all of this by 30 and started a family shortly after this. Kids are hard (I have two), but I wouldn't change anything. I know multiple single people in their 50s and 60s with no kids and they are all miserable human beings. Another issue is that most of your peers at that age are raising a family and have less time to get together, making it very lonely. If you wait long enough, your friends will retire/kids wi…

What about the elderly people with kids that end up alone in nursing homes?

I know a few people in the 50s and 60s with no kids and they are perfectly nice and happy. I also know parents who are real shit bags. Let’s stop this false narrative that people without kids are miserable or selfish or evil in some way. We are all just people, kids or no.

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#72

Post by yoyohello13 »

neild wrote: post #43
alexpotato wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been parenting for the last several thousand years. I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so? (To be fair, I have 3 kids and totally get why your scenario might lower the odds. I'll say that even with the 1am wakeups, the "I love you!" from a toddler is one of the best feelings ever.)

> I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so? Because by and large our female ancestors raised the children, were offered no choice in whether to raise the children, and their opinions of the situation were not recorded.

It is kind of humorous that the majority of people advocating for lots and lots of kids seem to be men.

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#73

Post by yoyohello13 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #68
fuzzybear3965 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weeks? Try years. As a parent of a newborn, I can confidently say that my wife hasn't had a full night's sleep for even one night since the kid was born in early July - she watches the kid at night (we live in a one bedroom apartment with the crib in our room - it affects me, too, but I try to tune it out and focus on sleep, as breadwinner). She also watches the kid all day while I work (9-11 hours). She's drained. I…

I have two kids. After the first 3 months they were sleeping 7-8 hours through the night.

Not all kids are the same. Shocking I know…

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#74

Post by yoyohello13 »

elzbardico wrote: post #33

This won't work and it is fine. Nothing is permanent, world population has fallen considerably in other times in history. Yeah, the GDP will probably drop, but necessarely the per capita GDP. Yeah, a falling GDP is not good news for people who lend money and expect compound interest over a long horizon of time, some defaults will happen, probably we would end up having to forgive some debts and writing off a lot of s…

People seem to be downvoting this but it’s true. We are entering a dip in population growth. Shit happens. We will come out the other side. Did they think “infinite growth” would be a sustainable strategy? Hopefully we will come up with an economic system that’s more focused on human fulfillment than productivity.

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#75

Post by anigbrowl »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

Last time I checked, the birthrate in Tokyo is actually pretty robust,I think it was 2.3 or something like that. It's the rest of the country where young people are reluctant to start families for a variety of economic and social reasons. A few of the leftish parties in Japan decentralization policies as part of their platform, and indeed much of the LDP's support comes from rural constituencies so you'd think they'd…

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h02015/ > June 2024: Japan’s total fertility rate hit a new low of 1.20 in 2023, with the rate for Tokyo falling to 0.99 for the first time. https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/asia/tokyo-government-4-day-w... > December 2024: Tokyo government gives workers 4-day workweek to boost fertility, family time

Sorry, I remembered it backwards. IT's the rural areas which have the fertility rate around 2.3 (which I also remembered as little high, but only by a few %):

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01975/

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#77

Post by poisonborz »

Two4 wrote: post #57

Radical idea: treat mothers as professionals. Train them, certify them, give them resources and support networks, then pay them to raise kids until school age or even beyond. It is a full time job, and should be treated as such if governments want to incentivise childbirth.

Why just mothers?

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#78

Post by piva00 »

srcnkcl wrote: post #70
loeg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't want to wait until we're in freefall to correct the decline.

There will never be a free fall. You guys are watching too many dystopic movies.

We don't know if there will be a free fall, that's the most central tenet of this issue. You are living in wishful thinking, it's uncharted territory, there is no "knowns" to base your statement on.

Even if one tries to apply first principles it's not something that can be derived easily to hold your statement as fact.

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#79

Post by danielscrubs »

twelve40 wrote: post #67
j7ake wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free day care is amazing. If that doesn’t make a dent then I am not sure what will. Probably free daycare and relaxing immigration would be best to increase population

it's just a form of subsidy, $500-$2000/month worth depending on where paid for by the people who don't have kids not very different than just giving out cash or tax credits

Just like pensions, that are from the people that have invested in kids to those that didn’t.

Re: Japan Offers Free Daycare to Boost Tokyo's Falling Birth Rate

#80

Post by orwin »

j7ake wrote: post #59
Animats wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free day care is amazing. If that doesn’t make a dent then I am not sure what will. France has a subsidy program for kids. It's not helping much. Current fertility rate is 1.85 (2.1 is breakeven). The only thing that seems to work is a religion that keeps women home pumping out babies and taking care of them. Islam and Haredi Judaism do that. There's a Christian "quiverfull" movement in the US, but it's not big eno…

1.85 is actually the highest in Western Europe and higher than Canada and USA.

But we had 2.1 not so long ago.

The issue is non-market housing used to be roughly 30% of the renting market, applying downward pressure on rent prices and thus, house prices. It's now less than 20%, with 95% being 'HLMs' (and a big part of those were from 'loi Pinel' that ended this year). We need to get back to a high percentage of non-market housing.

My father used to be the co-director of a 'chantier d'insertion' where he was teaching basic woodworking/painting/construction/DYI and also artistic skills to people (mostly men) outside of the workforce (from the 16yo dropout to the 54yo ex-farmer), and they did own a few buildings they restored, to help house everyone (they also had people teaching mechanics, electric, plumbing, gardening btw). The local city council changed it's political side, the initiative was shut down and the non-market houses bidded on. The GDP of our city that year probably skyrocketed.

PS: not on the subject: he still had time to clean up an ex-slaughterhouse with his guys, and organize an art exposition inside, with 'mort aux vaches' tagged outside with blood-looking paint, which, considering the new mayor was from a military family, had a not subtle double meaning.

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