[Column] Birth Rate Doubled... Lessons from a Remote Mountain Village in Japan

Nagicho (奈義町), a mountain village in Okayama Prefecture, Japan. On the 19th, Fumio Kishida, the Prime Minister of Japan, personally visited this small village with a population of just over 6,000. The reason the Prime Minister made a direct visit to this remote mountain village, where even election campaigns rarely come, is due to Nagicho's astonishing birth rate figures.

Nagicho's total fertility rate is 2.95. This is an astonishing figure more than twice the national average birth rate of 1.27 in Japan last year. It is more than three times higher than South Korea's birth rate, which has fallen to a global low of 0.78. This naturally draws the attention not only of Japan but also of other East Asian countries struggling with low birth rates.

However, just 20 years ago, Nagicho was like many other rural areas in Japan, facing continuous declines in birth rates and population decreases, almost merging with other municipalities. What changed Nagicho's fate?

First, what Japanese and international media focus on is Nagicho's comprehensive support policies. In Nagicho, support is provided as much as possible for child-rearing at every life stage, from marriage to childbirth, childcare, and education. The municipality covers half of infertility treatment costs, and parents receive a childbirth congratulatory payment of 100,000 yen (approximately 960,000 KRW) when they have a child. Additionally, the municipality covers all medical expenses for children up to 18 years old and provides educational support funds for children entering high school.

Children can be entrusted to a communal daycare center where elderly villagers directly care for them at a low cost, and stay-at-home parents raising children at home also receive separate support payments. Japanese media unanimously agree that what can be learned from Nagicho's child-rearing policy is the provision of detailed and comprehensive demand-centered services rather than simple cash handouts.

But even more important than this is the community's awareness and urgency regarding the low birth rate issue. In fact, support policies can be implemented anywhere by municipalities or the central government by allocating and executing budgets and items, but Nagicho's residents themselves felt this problem very urgently and united to push the policies forward.

In fact, before relying on the central government to allocate the childcare support budget, Nagicho reduced the number of municipal officials and council members by 20-30% compared to before. It was a drastic measure taken out of concern for the village's extinction, but can any municipality in South Korea really do this?

An administrative official from Nagicho told the press corps that came with Prime Minister Kishida, "This is a policy that other municipalities can sufficiently implement. Nagicho is not special," while emphasizing, "But it is by no means easy for the entire local community to accurately recognize the seriousness of the low birth rate problem and change their awareness."

This is a point that governments and municipalities in South Korea, which records the lowest birth rate in the world excluding city-states, should pay attention to. It is time to improve the complacent perception that children are merely human resources and that productivity will improve if large-scale public funds are invested like other production resources.