J Update

Since Prime Minister Fumio Kishida started leading his administration in the fall of 2021, one of the primary domestic political agenda has been introduction and prevalence of new national identification card called My Number card. While the issue seemed to have reached a culmination when the Diet passed the bill for scrapping health insurance card and integrate it with My Number card, a lot of errors over the issuance or operation of the cards were revealed after the law was enacted, causing broad public discredit on the government. It is possible that My Number can be fatal for Kishida administration.   My Number was introduced under Shinzo Abe administration in 2013, providing the people with twelve-digit identification number to make administrative procedures such as taxation or social security efficient. While the government distributed the number to every citizen, My Number card did not prevail as much as the government expected. Although the government hoped the number to be tie

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced his plan called “Children’s Future Strategy Policy” for dealing with Japan’s declining population. Recognizing urgency of turning current trend around, Kishida offered “acceleration plan,” a policy package for fixing the problem of declining birthrate by 2028, which included subsidies for the families with kids. Immediate skepticisms were raised, however, against his failure in showing credible budgetary resources. Experts on the demographic study pointed out a misguidance of the policy, arguing that the measures wrongly focused on the living kids instead of new-coming babies.   The acceleration plan proposes removing the income cap for the families receiving child benefits, which recipients will be including the families with a high school student in addition to them with a mid-school student or younger. Every child between the ages of 0 and 2 will receive ¥15,000 monthly, and she or he between 3 and 18 will get ¥10,000. The amount will be raised