Japan Looks At How French Make Babies

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]Yomiuri: France a model for fertility rate success
France's success in raising its total fertility rate to 2.005 is attracting attention in Japan, where government demographic data released Tuesday showed the nation's number of newborns and total fertility rate remained low in 2007. What national measures resulted in the French having more babies than the Japanese? Seiko Fujii, 37, who lives with her 35-year-old French husband and two sons, aged 5 and 3, in Antony, a suburb of Paris, said: "I was only able to have a second son because I live in this country. It would have been impossible in Japan"...In 2003, when the couple had only one child, they paid 1,500 euro (240,000 yen) in income tax for the year. In 2004, after their second son was born, the amount they were taxed almost halved to 840 euro (130,000 yen). France's extensive social welfare system relies on relatively high taxation. The nation's value added tax rate is 19.6 percent and its income tax rates are much higher than Japan's. But France's taxation system applies what is known as family coefficient rules--which means the larger the family, the lower the tax levied...Also, if parents use certified child care givers who take care of children at the parents' home or a day care center, part of the cost is tax-deductible...more...

[alicia454]

It is hopeless for Japan to increase its birthrates. Lets look at the facts:

• immigrant families typically have larger families in France, but immigrants in Japan have no rights and are harrassed to leave and not settle down and have families here
  
• Japanese women are subject to much more descrimination by society in general and by potential mates in particular, compared to French women, and are balking at traditional female roles
  
• the economic situation is much worse for the middle and lower classes in Japan, compared to their French counterparts
  
• Japan is very much an elitist class based society, compared to France which is much more egalitarian, so there is no chance that socialist polices, like those in France which support families, will be implimented here by the right-wing corporate elite
  
• left leaning socialist political parties have no chance of winning any election in Japan; in fact democracy is basically dead here since for most of modern Japanese history, people have been are too stupid to consider voting for anyone other than the corrupt Liberal Democrates

Personally I consider the declining population of Japanese in Japan a good thing, It means that the number of Japanese racists should also decrease. Too bad the birth rate does not drop to zero. Maybe after a few decades, Japan might considering granting rights to immigrates and passing anti-descrimination laws.

As someone who was born is Europe, and holds both a EU and Canadian passport, I am disgusted that Japanese immigrants in Europe and Canada have far more rights than I will ever have in Japan. Millions of Japanese have immigrated to many countries all over the world, and yet Japan (especially the Justice Ministry) is not willing to accept much needed immigrants here.