Child-Rearing Environment Inadequate in Japan: White Paper

June 19, 2018

Tokyo- People in Japan are less satisfied with the child-rearing environment in the country than those in Britain, France and Sweden, a Japanese government white paper revealed Tuesday.

The 2018 white paper on the declining birthrate, adopted at the day's cabinet meeting, cited survey results showing that 46.6 pct of respondents in Japan find it easy to give birth and raise children in their country, while the satisfaction rate reached 97.9 pct in Sweden, 70.6 pct in France and 70.3 pct in Britain.

In particular, Japan was rated worst in allowing child-rearing parents to work in flexible ways, such as under the flextime and part-time systems, easily take maternity and parental leave and benefit from various child care services, with only 13.1 pct, 16.0 pct and 27.1 pct of respondents in the country expressing content, respectively.

Given those findings, the white paper pointed out that Japan lags behind the European countries in terms of the child-rearing environment at the workplace and in local communities.

As examples of measures to create environments friendly to child-raising, the annual report referred to corporate moves to introduce teleworking and flextime systems and nursery school operations by businesses and universities.

Efforts by private-sector companies and public institutions, as well as the government, are essential to facilitate child-rearing, it concluded.

The survey was conducted in October-December 2015 on 700 men and women aged 20-49 in each of the four countries. Jiji Press