The government on Thursday convened its first meeting to discuss what Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called “measures of unprecedented levels” to tackle Japan’s declining birthrate.

Participants in the meeting included officials from the welfare ministry, the education ministry and the finance ministry, as well as an office involved in establishing the Children and Families Agency in April. The members plan to come up with specific measures by the end of March.

“Measures regarding the declining birthrate are a top priority for the Kishida administration,” said Masanobu Ogura, the minister in charge of the measures and who chaired Thursday’s meeting. “We want to break down the ministerial barriers and come up with bold unprecedented draft proposals.”

Kishida is expected to announce his resolve to roll out significant child care measures next week in a speech to be delivered at the beginning of a new parliamentary session.

Jiji Press has also reported that Kishida will declare child-rearing support to be "the most important policy for the sustainability and inclusiveness of economic society," while also stressing that spending on policy steps to assist families is "the most important investment for the future." As such, the prime minister will consider procuring the necessary funds from various social insurance systems, the report also said.

Measures likely to be discussed are beefed-up allowances for families with young children, the expansion of public child care services such as after-school day care and postnatal care, as well as work-style reform that affords greater work-life balance to families.

Currently, a child care allowance of ¥15,000 is paid to every child per month until they reach the age of 3. After that a ¥10,000 allowance is provided until the child graduates from junior high school. The new measures could expand the ages of children eligible for the allowance or additional support for families with many children.

Kishida has already announced his intention to double the nation’s spending for children-related measures, which would likely be included in so-called honebuto economic and fiscal policy guidelines coming out in June. But both the baseline and final budgets for such measures remain unclear.

Exactly how the new policies will be financed is also unclear. Observers say that Kishida will likely remain vague on the source of the funds needed for such bold initiatives until nationwide local elections are over on April 9 and April 23, for fear of angering voters by touching on the possibility of a tax hike.

Japan’s total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman will bear in her lifetime — has been on the decline for years. While recovering from the lowest rate of 1.26 in 2005, the rate stood at 1.30 in 2021, the latest year for which the statistics are available. The number of newborns was the lowest ever in 2021, at 811,622.

Experts have pointed out a combination of factors for the long-term trend, including the declining population, the stagnant economy, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, and the slow progress on women’s empowerment.

Last week, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced plans to make child care services at nurseries free for second children in the capital.

Tokyo’s move will apply to babies between the ages of 0 and 2, regardless of their parents’ income levels. The Tokyo government will also give ¥5,000 per month per child until they turn 18 from around next January, as well as provide subsidies for healthy women wishing to freeze their eggs for future pregnancies.

“These are projects the central government should tackle, but we decided to offer our own support, as there’s not a moment to be wasted,” Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Jan. 12 as she announced the measures.