Do you remember the time not so very long ago when I got all het up over Vladimir Putin offering citizens money to make more Russians the old-fashioned way, by putting babies in Russian mommies’ tummies?
As opposed to, oh, maybe taking babies out of social welfare institutions?
Well, apparently, the Russians aren’t the only one of China’s neighbors to offer money to people to create babies. The Japan Journal reports that in 900 years, Japanese people will be extinct because they’re running low on babies, too.
If Japan’s current birthrate of around 1.3 persists, the Japanese will fall steadily in number until they disappear altogether. The government has hammered out policies designed to raise the birthrate, and heavy media coverage is given to this topic under the broad title of shoshika, which means “declining number of children.”
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Government policies?
Yep. Over the past 10 years, Japan’s national government has set up a system to give financial assistance to households with children. The Ministry of State for Gender Equality and Social Affairs compensates for earnings lost by those taking childcare leave. It has also instituted all kinds of support for public nursery services and child care… and, as part of the same push, started a program to help young people find employment.
As you might guess, the Ministry of State for Gender Equality and Social Affairs didn’t exist 10 years ago. It came into being under the auspices of a Yale grad and mother of twins, in large part to deal with the shoshika crisis.
All to help couples decide to make babies. Japanese babies.
The most dramatic policies are being put forward at the local level, as that Japan Journal article explains:
Local governments are hatching their own strategies. In a unique example in Yamatsuri-cho, Fukushima prefecture, one million yen (8,700 dollars) is awarded to every family having a third or later child. In Miyoshi-shi, Hiroshima prefecture, all employees of the city offices having a baby, father or mother, are obliged to take two months off. Nara prefecture organizes a range of different events to provide opportunities for men and women to meet each other, in the hope of promoting marriages.
The policy appears to be working, according to the BBC. Last August, Japan reported an increased birthrate for the first time in six years. Check out the picture caption in that story. Desperate for children. It’s also used in this BBC article, which points out that Japan is the least fertile and longest lived nation.
Well, you know, there’s a solution there that someone just might be overlooking….
The weird thing is that Japanese birthrate researchers know full well about adoption. (That’s a pdf – and you can find references to adoption throughout it.) Perhaps part of the problem is explained in the top half of this 2005 article on Japan’s attitudes to immigrants (even the tiny ones). I’d guess, though, that part of the problem is also hinted at in the last couple paragraphs, which detail some of China’s ongoing problems with Japan.
So I wonder if the CCAA gives Japanese people permission to adopt….
Looking for the answer to that wonder (not really a question, but a wonder), I discovered this blog about adopting from Japan. Costs as much as a luxury car! Very rare! But not unheard of. So there’s an international adoption system (as in Russia) already in place.
You’d really think someone somewhere would be catching on by now.
Grant, if blue is not enough babies, and red is too many, what is green? What does ‘Gender Equality’ have to do with a program to promote more babies? Its nice that the program is working. John
You know, it isn’t just Russia or Japan that offers monetary incentives to produce offspring. Having recently done my own taxes, I can assure you that the United States of these here Americas also offers money to parents.
In fact, Putin is offering less for the first kid (about $720 a year give or take the exchange rage) than America. My own little bundle of joy saved me $1,000 on my taxes this year.
Unfortunately, Putin’s second kid would be worth $1,440. The IRS will only give me $1,000 for each additional kid.
In America, the tax credit applies to both biological as well as adopted offspring. So, I guess that is better than Russia, Japan or elsewhere.
How is this for a progressive idea… The state knows how much it costs to keep a kid at the orphanage, right? Why not offer a third or even half that amount to anyone who adopts a kid.
The state wins by getting kids out of their care at a discounted rate. Parents have a strong financial incentive to adopt. Kids get families.
Instead of kids being a cost center, let them be a profitable enterprise. If I could get just $1,000 a year from the government for having my own child or $10,000 a year (or more) for adopting a kid, why would I ever go biological?
Of course, there would have to be more screening if there was a for-profit angle to adoption. You would need to prohibit related-party transactions and self-dealing. (For example, two sisters couldn’t have a child each and then exchange through adoption in order to collect the bonus adoption money.)
Certainly someone has already thought of this idea. What is the downside?
It’s the rest of “East Asia” — I just ganked a map of East Asia from wikipedia and drew on it. If you want to be technical, it’s Mongolia and the Korean peninsula. And Taiwan. Let’s not forget Taiwan….
Well, in the case of Russia and Japan, I think it’s nationalism — the idea of adopted kids being immigrants. Within China itself, actually, adopted kids don’t count toward your One-Child Policy total, so in essence, they’re paid for/credited. But the idea of heredity and family as a biological thing is pretty strong — from all I’ve read, there’s some social concern with taking in someone else’s rejects or children from those sorts of families. Domestic adoption is getting somewhat more widespread, though, and will likely continue to do so.
Oh, and America has this other thing: the adoption tax credit. It’s not just the money for having a kid around, but the money for the process of adopting the little creature. And that *does* go up to $10,000.
Here: http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc607.html
Oh, and
It has to do with working mothers and careers being a factor in delaying the decision to have children.