The capital of Japan, Tokyo, has created a plan to address the birth crisis that the Asian country is going through. Given the serious demographic situation, the city will apply the four-day work system to combat the stigma of being “the oldest population in the world.” To the strategy, they also add a Tinder-type application in order to promote dating among their citizens.
As detailed in a Fortune publication, starting in April, the Tokyo metropolitan government, one of the country’s largest employers, will allow its employees to work only four days a week. At the same time, it is adding a new “partial childcare leave” policy, which will allow some employees to work two hours less per day. The goal, according to the economic media article, is to help employees who are parents balance childcare and work, said Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.
“We will continue to review working styles flexibly to ensuring that women do not have to sacrifice their careers due to life events such as childbirth or parenting“Koike said during the regular session of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, and reports Japan Times.
Japan hit a record low earlier this year. From January to June, the Asian country registered 350,074 births, 5.7% less than in the same period of 2023according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Since that time, a number of plans have been devised to increase the birth rate.
Japanese fertility rate
In data, the country’s total fertility rate, which represents the number of children a woman has over her lifetime, stood at 1.2 in 2023, and in Tokyo, the birth rate was even lower, from 0.99. To maintain a generally stable population, a birth rate of 2.1 is required, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In comparison, the average age of a Japanese citizen is 49.9 years, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. In the United States, on the other hand, the average age is 38.9 years.
Although the Tokyo plan has been devised since the latest drastic demographic figures, it is an issue that has been considered since the 90s. Since then, the Asian giant required companies to offer generous maternity leave, childcare subsidies and cash payments to parents.
The Japanese Tinder
In another attempt to solve the Birth Problem, earlier this year, the Tokyo government also launched its own dating app to help single people find a partner and get married, which would be a kind of Tinder, but named after ‘Tokyo Futary Story’, in which 200 million yen (more than one million euros) has been invested for the fiscal year of 2023 and 300 million more (more than one and a half million euros) for the fiscal year of 2024, according to a breakdown of The Asahi Simbun.
And, as reflected in the survey carried out by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance with data from 2023, dating applications and work were the most common ways in which couples in the country had met. In fact, app exits account for 25% of couples who got married within a year.
The four-day work week
Adopting a four-day work week could help address some of the core problems associated with Japan’s drudgery culture, which can especially affect working women. The gap between men and women when it comes to housework is one of the largest among OECD countries: “women in Japan do five times more unpaid work, such as caring for children and the elderly, than men,” according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Along these lines, more than half of the women who had fewer children than they would have preferred said they had fewer children due to increased housework who would bring with him another child, adds the IMF.
As reflected in the report of the trial of the four-day work week carried out in six countries by ‘4 Day Week Global’, who advocates for this policy, reveals that in some cases, the adoption of a four-day work week has been shown to “improves equity in household chores”. Men reported spending 22% more time caring for children and 23% more time doing housework.
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