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.
  • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    4 hours ago

    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.

    • fireweed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      5 hours ago

      I’m seeing articles about Japanese youth taking record advantage of temporary work programs like working holiday visas, but living abroad for 1-3 years is quite different from leaving Japan altogether. The bigger issues seem to be what’s causing both the temp work abroad and low birth rate issues: high CoL relative to wages, poor work culture, and general perception that the “traditional” life trajectory is unfulfilling/unrewarding.

    • veroxii@aussie.zoneEnglish
      14·
      7 hours ago

      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.

      • Uruanna@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        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.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.ukEnglish
      5·
      9 hours ago

      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!

      • Flamekebab@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        7 hours ago

        My first is due in a couple of months and I’m pleased to report that parking is free at our local hospital!

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.luEnglish
      17·
      10 hours ago

      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.

      • Uruanna@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        6 hours ago

        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.