Japan wants to set just the right mood to get its people to make more babies. But forget dinner and candlelight: The government's plan depends heavily on large amounts of cash.
With a worried eye on declining birth rates and an aging population, Japan's new leaders propose offering new parents monthly payments totaling about $3,300 a year for every new child until the age of 15. Other initiatives include more state-supported day care, tuition waivers and other efforts designed to make parenthood more appealing.
That works out to over $23000 for my family!
On a more serious note, this is symptomatic of what we are experiencing all around the West and soon in America. Intentional childlessness is leading to a demographic imbalance with an ever increasing number of elderly dependent on a shrinking pool of younger workers. We want more and more from the government but we still want to retire at 65. Who is going to pay for all of this?
2 comments:
A good book covering this topic, ie: the declining birthrate in Japan, Europe, and Canada, and the effects it is having, and will continue to have, is called America Alone, by Mark Steyn. The premise of the book is that when demographics drastically change, culture drastically changes, and that it is the end of the world as we know it. Interesting reading.
I have heard that book is a good one.
I myself, am going to sneak into Mexico.
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