Tokyo lets civil servants work 4 days a week to increase the birth rate

This program will start from April 2025. Officials also announced other policies such as allowing parents with children in grades 1 to 3 to reduce part of their salary to get off work early.

“We will consider redistributing flexible working hours to workers, ensuring that no one has to give up their career because of life choices such as having children or taking care of children,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said. spoke in a speech on December 14.

She commented that this is a challenging time, and also a time when the capital needs to proactively protect and enhance people’s lives, livelihoods, and economy. Japan’s birth rate has been falling sharply for years, hitting a new record low in June, despite government efforts to encourage young people to get married and have children. According to the Ministry of Health, last year there were only 727,277 births, with the fertility rate (the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime) falling to a new low of 1.2. To maintain a stable population, the birth rate needs to reach 2.1.

The Japanese government is pushing a series of urgent policies to reverse the population crisis, including giving men leave when their wives give birth. Other local governments also introduced measures to improve working conditions.

Many sociologists believe that the reason Japan’s birth rate has dropped sharply is due to its harsh work culture and rising living costs. Long working hours have become a problem for companies in this country, where workers often suffer from health problems, in serious cases “karoshi” (death from overwork).

Like many other countries, Japanese women are under pressure to choose between career and family, but the unique culture of overtime makes pregnancy and parenting especially difficult.

According to the World Bank, the gender gap in Japan’s workforce last year was 55% for women and 72% for men, higher than in other high-income countries.

The move to a four-day work week is attracting interest in the West, where some companies are starting to adopt reduced working hours as a way to attract talent, especially those seeking a balance between work and life. Some studies show that this improves workers’ health and productivity.

However, this is still considered a radical idea for Japanese companies, where working hours are often seen as a measure of company loyalty.

Tokyo is not the only place in Asia implementing family-friendly work policies. Earlier this year, Singapore introduced new guidelines, asking all companies to consider their employees’ wishes for flexible working hours.