Tokyo wants its workers to have more babies

Starting in April, Tokyo’s 160,000+ government employees will be able to take an extra day off work each week, per a recent announcement.

The world’s most-populated city hopes the move will force flexibility into its grueling work culture and enable more women to choose both career and family – boosting the city’s stork deliveries.

By the numbers:

• Japan is expected to welcome less than 700,000 newborns this year, its lowest level since records began in 1899.
• The country’s birth rate dipped to 1.2 babies per woman last year, according to Japan’s health ministry. Generally, that rate needs to be 2.1 for a population to remain stable (the “replacement rate”).

This isn’t the first measure Japan has taken to jumpstart babymaking. The country, in its 16th straight year of population decline, has also unveiled tax breaks, free daycare, and a government-made dating app.

🌏 Elsewhere…Population probs also abound. Half of the world lives in countries where the fertility rate has fallen below the replacement rate, according to a 2019 report from the United Nations Population Fund.