The program will have a positive impact because it provides timely support to child-rearing households considering having more children.

The savings our family has made through this program, while welcome, have been more than offset by an increase in our health insurance payments. Also, even though hoikuen is now free for our oldest child, we still have to pay for required extras like hats and smocks. If a family is seriously considering whether to have another child, I doubt this will be enough to tip the scales.

This alone is not enough. Anyway, making it free isn't a help if you can't find a place for your child.

Many nurseries put up fees immediately the government started paying for them - ripping off the tax payer.

This will hardly move the needle at all with respect to the birthrate. Japanese politicians who say otherwise are deluding themselves and the public.

Yes, young families will end up with a little extra disposable income during those three years, but most people are already decided on how many children they want. Very few will have a third after having a second. Almost none will have a fourth after having a third.

This subsidy won't have any substantial effect because it completely misidentifies the problem. People aren't getting married until their 30s, if at all. Most women are passing through their prime childbearing years unmarried, and only start trying to have kids after fertility begins to drop off dramatically. Get people married at 25 instead of 35, and the birth rate might change. Leave be the trend of marriage and families starting later and later, and the number of kids will continue to fall.

If money were the deciding factor in people having children, then the poorest people would be having the fewest kids. In most of the industrialized world, however, we now see the opposite. Poorer people have more kids, while wealthier people tend to have fewer. It's not about government subsidies. Throwing every yen raised by the consumption tax hike at the problem will change very little. There are much deeper social trends at work.

@mikeylikesit Spot on. And even if people had the same number of children as before, the later marriage means more years between generations. Where 60 years might have seen 3 generations, now it sees only 2 generations.

But I am happy to see the population decrease on this vastly overpopulated planet. It's good for everyone except the politicians, who need the tax funds to continue their Ponzi schemes at least until they can retire comfortably.