Japan plans to increase financial incentives for parents leaving Tokyo as the government seeks to reverse decades of demographic decline, economic migration and the lure of the world’s largest metropolis.
Officials briefed on the plan say the government will try to persuade families to relocate with a generous payment of up to 1 million yen ($10,000) per child as they leave and enter crowded Tokyo the inland municipalities and neighboring prefectures pull. The amount is more than triple the 300,000 yen (R$12,300) offered in an existing program since 2019.
The increase in child benefits is just part of the government’s commitment to encouraging young families to leave Tokyo. Families who are relocating can already receive up to 3 million yen in onetime financial support and can receive even more if they start a business.
Those who receive the money must live in the province for at least five years or pay it back to the state.
Japan’s shrinking and aging population and the migration of younger people to the capital have disproportionately hit regions outside of Tokyo, Osaka and some other major cities.
Many rural towns and villages were emptied, their shops starving for customers and available employees. The estimated surplus of vacant homes in Japan homes often left unclaimed by heirs is expected to reach around 10 million by 2023.
At the same time, Tokyo’s position as a major magnet for economic activity and migration has grown. In 2021, despite the pandemicinduced slowdown and the reported renewed popularity of remote work, the median price for a new apartment in Tokyo surpassed the peak reached in 1989 at the height of Japan’s housing bubble.
Around 1,300 Japanese communities have already pledged to accept migrants from Tokyo. According to government sources, just under 2,400 people claimed the relocation payment in fiscal 2021 a figure equivalent to about 0.006% of the 38 million Greater Tokyo area population.
Websites for communities trying to attract newcomers combine publicity about their rural charm with insightful honesty about their situation. The village of Umaji in Kochi Prefecture (population 820) offers free day care “and of course no children on the waiting list”. The nearby town of Tano offers the attraction of a rare sundried salt factory, but notes that 42% of the local population is over 65 years old.
Rural communities are being observed by Japan’s state broadcaster NHK, which heavily promotes the idea of moving to the countryside in a show that follows the lives of families who have made the leap.
“We watch this show, and of course you think you would do the same,” said Erika Horiguchi, a working mom who moved into an apartment in central Tokyo with her husband and daughter in 2018 but hasn’t left town wants to build interiors. “My husband left Aomori Prefecture when he was young because he knew it would be more difficult to find work there. There’s a reason Japanese people come to Tokyo and I don’t think the government can change that.”
Online, reports of the government’s offer of 1 million yen per child relocated met with similar skepticism. “Sounds like a lot of money, but not enough to make anyone really want to have kids,” reads one post.
The government’s move to encourage people to move comes amid concerns about Japan’s subreplacement birth rate a demographic reality for several decades and stubborn resistance to many efforts to encourage larger families.
The number of babies in Japan is also falling faster than previously thought. In 2021, the number of births in Japan dropped to just over 811,000. Forecasts based on the first nine months of 2022 suggest the number will fall below 800,000 for the first time since records began in the late 19th century.
In its comprehensive forecasts on future population figures published in 2017, the progovernment National Institute of Population and Social Security Research assumed that this limit would not be exceeded until 2030.