Benefits should be increased, at least temporarily.

Many married couples want to have children, but the costs of raising them in Japan are too high. The education ministry estimates that total education expenses for one child from kindergarten to a public senior high school run to about 5 million yen.

If the child goes to private schools, the expenses will be higher. Tuition fees for a college or a preparatory school add to the costs.

A survey that asked couples why they decided not to have more children found that the financial burden was the biggest obstacle.

About 70 percent of social security benefits paid by the central and local governments concern elderly people. Only 4 percent of the benefits are spent for the sake of children and their families in the forms of child-support allowances and maintenance of nursery schools. The governments apparently want parents to be fully responsible for child-care efforts.

In 1972, the central government began to pay child-support allowances to help families with small children. At present, it pays 5,000 yen a month for the first and second children and 10,000 yen for each additional sibling. But the child-support payments stop when a child finishes the third grade. And not everyone is entitled to the payments. The allowance is paid to, for example, families with an annual income of less than 7.8 million yen if both parents are salaried workers.

The child-support allowance, which was 3,000 yen a month when it was first paid in 1972, was increased gradually, but its amount leveled off after the end of the country's rapid economic growth. At present, about 600 billion yen is budgeted a year for the benefits.

The child-support allowance in Japan is considerably smaller than in European countries, which also suffer from low birthrates. In France, whose low birthrate began to rise a few years ago, the government pays child-support allowance of about 15,000 yen a month to a second child and about 19,000 yen a month for each extra child until they reach their 20th birthday. In Germany, where the birthrate has hovered around the same level for many years, a monthly child-support allowance of about 21,000 yen is paid to each of the first three children and about 24,000 yen each for additional boys and girls until they are 18 years old. There are no limits on the income of recipient families in both countries.

In Japan, skeptical opinions are expressed every time a proposal is made to increase the child-support allowance. Skeptics doubt that young mothers will increasingly bear children if only child-support allowance is increased. The doubters say it is more important to upgrade nursery schools and child-care leave.

Political parties argued for increased child-support allowances apparently for the purpose of collecting votes in elections. For those reasons, The Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial that it could not support an easygoing increase in the allowance.

However, Japan's population will begin to decrease after reaching a peak in 2006. There is no knowing how deeply the birthrate will decline. The experiences of European countries suggest that generous child-support allowances do stop the decline in the birthrate.

We propose the government increase the child-support allowance to the French or German level and see, for about 10 years, if it helps to restrain the drop in the birthrate.

Given the government's debt, the money needed for child-support should come from the social security budget, including allocations for elderly people. It will also be worth considering reducing an income tax break for dependents.

Businesses should also get into the act. Companies now finance part of the child-support allowance, but only for employees' children who are younger than 3 years old. Can't they finance the allowance until those children grow older? If businesses are concerned about a future labor shortage and shrinking market, they should take the lead in bearing a financial burden to lift the birthrate.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 29(IHT/Asahi: November 30,2004)