Yeah, but the SBD's are the worst!
Posted on 03/11/2005 10:44:30 PM PST by jwalburg
TOKYO (AP) - How about getting paid 1 million yen for having a baby? To combat a shrinking population, a small town in northern Japan has decided to give a cash award worth about $9,600 to each female resident who has a third child, an official said Friday.
To be eligible, the women must have lived in Yamatsuri town for more than a year, town hall spokesman Eiichi Takanobu said.
Yamatsuri, where the population has fallen from 7,400 a decade ago to 7,000 this year, is not alone among Japanese towns who are losing people.
As the country's birthrate declines, demographers have predicted Japan's population will peak at about 127.7 million next year and fall rapidly over the next half-century to about 100 million.
The situation is raising concerns about how future generations will support the growing ranks of elderly and how businesses will survive as the labor pool shrinks.
To encourage families to have more children, the central government has started building more day-care centers and encouraged men to take paternity leave.
It is rare, however, for a town to offer its female residents a large sum for having a baby.
Yamatsuri will hand mothers a lump sum of $4,800 within three months after giving birth to a third baby. The women will then be given $480 each year between the child's second and 11th birthday, Takanobu said.
Last year, 50 babies were born in Yamatsuri, up from 40 in 2003, Takanobu said.
Japan's birthrate fell to a record low of 1.29 in 2003 as improved career opportunities give women more options aside from marriage. Many families also put off having children due to the difficulties of finding affordable child care and weak support for working mothers from companies and communities.
But this can't be. The U.N. told me the world is overpopulating. Everybody will be allotted a square-yard space to live in.
Japan needs our help. Quickly, send them some Mormons.
The UN's most recent population report has revised the global fertility rate down from 2.1 - i.e., replacement rate - to 1.85 - i.e., eventual population decline. It will peak in about 2050, and then fall off in a geometric progression.
Actually, that will depend on what's on T.V.
Well, Japan has a space problem and always has. I would think they might welcome a bit of lessening of their population. Traditionally, they don't have much immigration.
Not just Japan. Will Western civilization be outbred by the Islamofascist scum. Will Western Anglo civilization survive against an onslaught of Islamofascists breeding like rabbits?
It's a real problem in Europe. The French, Germans and Italians are not reproducing enough or even replacing themselves with a high enough birthrate.
Even here in the US we are being overwhelmed by illegal immigrants from South of the border.
Wonder if they need surrogate fathers?
The Japanese "space problem" is mostly myth. Inside urban complexes, space is at a premium and privacy is virtually nonexistant. But the countryside, and there's a lot of it particularly in the north, has suffered a double whammy in our lifetimes. First, young people don't want to live there and are attracted to the lights, glamour and crowding of big cities. Second, jobs in the country are few, far between and pay precious little. Nevertheless, Japan as woefully crowded country, is a myth which even the Japanese themselves buy into. (Notice, it wasn't Tokyo which offered the bounty.)
Japan * ping *
Could you imagine hearing you're neighbor fart?
Anyway,
I see the intention. It's not something I would promote though.
When I was a kid in the 1950s, visiting small Japanese villages, I looked forward to the Saturday storyteller. Usually the story was accompanied by board pictures that would be turned as the story progressed. There were also puppeteers who put on one or two act plays.
Actually, that will depend on what's on T.V...- Irish
excerpt: ..."An interesting New York Times article from Aug 10, 1966 says that a sharp increase in births were reported by several large hospitals nine months after the 1965 blackout. Mount Sinai Hospital had 28 births the Monday nine months later. This was a record for the hospital whose previous average was 11 births daily. Columbia Presbyterian averages 11 births daily and had 15 that Monday. St. Vincent’s averages 7 births and had 10. Brookdale averages 10 and had 13 and, Coney island averages 5 and had 8. When sociologist Paul Siegel was asked to comment on the increase of births he said "the lights went out and people were left to interact with each other."
Yeah, but the SBD's are the worst!
Apparently, a Japanese maker of infant goods is giving employees who have a child 2 million yen, almost $20,000.
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