Off the wire
• Mixed-ownership reform of Bank of Communications approved  • Bloodshed persists in Iraq as 44 killed in air strikes, clashes  • China loans Zambia 29 mln USD for infrastructure  • Vietnam arrests 6 online shopping cheaters  • 1st LD Writethru: CPC issues rules to regulate leading Party members' groups  • Norway's Statoil to lay off up to 2,000 staff, consultants  • New investigation launched at MH17 crash site in Ukraine  • China to further cooperate with Iraq, says diplomat  • Chinese medical team to serve Botswana people  • Malaysia's opposition party breaks up  
You are here: 　 Home

75 pct Japanese couple face obstacles for 2nd child: survey

Xinhua, June 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

A recent survey has shown that 75 percent of Japanese parents face economic and social obstacles to having a second child, though nearly 80 percent hope to have two or more children, local media reported on Tuesday.

The online survey, covering about 3,000 couples across the country who have been married for up to 14 years, found that 86.5 percent had financial difficulties to afford two children and 64.7 percent full-time working mothers cited professional reasons as obstacles to having a second child, such as difficulties in taking maternity leave and the impact on their career, according to Kyodo news agency.

As for measures to remove obstacles to having a second child, 81.9 percent of the total respondents said they need financial support for child birth, childcare and education, followed by support at the workplace in taking a leave of absence and returning to work at 45.4 percent, while improving the balance between work and home life by such steps as shortening working hours came in at 44.0 percent.

The poll was conducted by an organization headed by Masako Mori, former minister in charge of tackling the declining birthrate, in April and covered 604 men aged 20 to 49 and 2,357 women aged 20 to 39.

About 48 percent of the respondents said their ideal number of children was two, followed by three at 28.2 percent, one at 15.1 percent, zero at 5.3 percent and four or more at 3.3 percent.

Of the respondents who actually gave birth to two or more children, 97.6 percent replied that they are satisfied and happy.

Earlier in June, a Japanese government population survey report showed that the average number of children born to a woman declined for the first time in nine years to 1.42 in 2014, after gradually rising since hitting a record low of 1.26 in 2005.

According to the government report, the number of births in Japan in 2014 fell 26,284 from a year earlier to a record low of 1, 003,532. A drop in second child births accounted for more than half of the decline at 14,703, with the margin reaching five-fold and 12-fold compared with 2013 and 2012 levels, respectively. Endi