270
Japan set to fully cover childbirth costs possibly from April 2026
(english.kyodonews.net)
UK perspective: they weren't already?
Yeah was wondering the same here from Australia.
Back when my daughter was born, not only did we not pay anything, the government gave us a $5000 "baby bonus"
I'm surprised Japan doesn't have more "please have children" incentives with their declining demographics.
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
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.
It seems absolutely insane to me that people have to pay. I was annoyed at having to pay £10 for the car park when we had our first!
My first is due in a couple of months and I'm pleased to report that parking is free at our local hospital!
Epidurals, in which labor pain is reduced, are expected to remain outside coverage under the proposals.
So what, pain relief is an optional upcharge, like choosing to add avocado to your sandwich?
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be ecstatic if the US went this far to help new parents, but fuck whoever decided that it’s acceptable to omit epidurals from the covered costs.
In the US too?! We’re saved!
From our experience in the US, the birth is nothing compared to the financial drain of the other expenses. And at this age, childcare dwarfs all the other child-related expenses.
We have great insurance and don't rely on family for childcare though, so the math is very very different for someone with "free" familial childcare and no/lousy insurance...
…for the next 18 years?
Good move by Japan here.
And watch as the birth rate increase ten fold
Nah, you gotta feed, house, educate, dress the kid and be there as a parent afterwards.
That's a good step in the right direction but Japan has much bigger issues than the cost of giving birth to explain why Japanese aren't having kids.
Actually, it has been identified as one of the bigger issues. Lack of childcare options means one parent needs to stay home, means one income, means lots of women tend to just work a few years in office exclusively to find a good husband and then drop out of everything (cue the incel population who understands that if they can't have a huge income, they might never get laid). Also, single income participates in the terrible work culture where staying at one company forever is the better option because people who leave get burned everywhere. And this lifestyle, this work identity, this lack of prospectives, is a big part of why young people are losing hope fast. This vicious cycle has been pretty well known forever, and childcare has been recognized as a major starter of it for a while.
Housing in Japan is often a culture of 3 generations living in the same home, single income participates in that too, but there are housing options - Japan has a notoriously high number of empty homes, abandoned and falling apart; we don't have any perspective right now on what direction this could go if the demographics started improving. I don't think I've heard anyone ever bring up that education had any particular problem, as far as I can tell they get what they need. In all of those fields there's probably a bunch of issues about outdated standards everywhere, but there's no big issue about entire spans of population dropping out of education or housing or feeding.
Well that is true but from most of the parents I talk to,it's the cost of having a baby that's the first stumbling block,and this cam only help
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
270 points (98.9% liked)
World News
46836 readers
3631 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS