The child-rearing environment in Japan has changed significantly over the last few decades.For example, the rate of female students going to four-year colleges and the employment rate are rising.As a result, opportunities to use childcare services have increased, and the financial burden on child-rearing households has increased.
In order to design an appropriate child-rearing support policy in response to changes in the child-rearing environment, it is necessary to measure changes in child-rearing costs over time.Therefore, Nagoya University and Meijo University jointly examined how child-rearing costs changed from the period from 1993 to 1999 to the period from 10 to 2003, which is 2009 years later. ..As a result, it became clear that the cost of raising children under the age of 2 has increased significantly.
In this study, "equivalent" to measure "how much additional spending is required for a couple in a child-rearing household to achieve the same standard of living as before when one child is added to a household with only a couple". "Scale method" is adopted. Data were used to track 1993 married females aged 24 to 34 in 6,553 and 2003 married females aged 24 to 34 in 3,424, respectively, over a seven-year period. ..
As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that the child-rearing cost of children under 2 years old increased clearly between the two periods from 22,137 yen to 62,855 yen per month.This has the policy implication that allowances for households with preschool children should be prioritized.In the future, as a more practical policy discussion, we will proceed with academic and policy research on issues such as how much the allowance should be expanded and how to secure the financial resources.
Paper information:[Japan Center for Economic Research] Changes in child-rearing costs over time-Measurement of equivalence scale using Japanese panel data
