Roland Kelts: I do. I think it's a canary in a coal mine. It doesn't help Japan's marriage rates—and therefore birth rates—that a growing number of businesses now cater to the rise of parties ...

Languages: English. Japan is poised to significantly overhaul its approach to childbirth costs as part of a sweeping initiative to tackle its declining birth rate. A government panel has ...

Japan has been struggling to cope with a combination of anaemic economic growth and a shrinking population for over 30 years. 2025 marks the tipping point when the rising costs outstrip the country's ...

Japan lags far behind other big economies with an index for its real average annual wages showing almost no growth between 1995 and 2021, according to IMF data. That compares with growth rates of ...

TOKYO – Japan’s Health Ministry is set to eliminate out-of-pocket payments associated with child delivery, possibly from April 2026, to address the country’s declining birth rate.

Using prefectural data, we study the potential impact on wage dynamics of the planned minimum wage increase policy in Japan. Our main result is that stepping up minimum wage growth from 2 to the ...

Japan is likely to cover parents’ hospital fees for childbirth from April 2026 as the country struggles to reverse its falling birth rate. A panel of experts tasked with examining ways to ease ...

As global birth rates continue to decline, the Trump administration has announced that it is considering policies aimed at reversing this trajectory for the United States. According to a recent ...

TOKYO (Reuters) -The Bank of Japan expects wages and prices to keep rising even ... signalling the bank's resolve to maintain its rate-hike stance. While U.S. tariffs are likely to hurt Japan's ...

That suggests discussions may have touched upon Japan's monetary policy, as both wages and prices are key to the timing and pace of further interest rate hikes by the BOJ. Sources have told ...