Less work – more children? Tokyo switches to a 4-day work week
9 December 2024 15:26
Japan is facing a demographic crisis, and the country’s largest city, Tokyo, is trying to find a solution through an innovative approach – the introduction of a four-day work week. Fortune writes about this, reports "Komersant Ukrainian".
From April 2024, the Tokyo government, one of the largest employers in Japan, will allow its employees to work only four days a week. In addition, a new policy of “partial parental leave” is being introduced, which will allow individual employees to reduce their working day by two hours.
“We will continue to review work styles flexibly so that women do not have to sacrifice their careers due to life events such as giving birth or raising children,”
– Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said in a speech at the Metropolitan Government Assembly session.
These measures are driven by alarming demographic indicators. In the first half of 2024, only 350,074 children were born in Japan, down 5.7% from the same period in 2023, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The country’s total fertility rate, which determines the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime, was 1.2 in 2023. In Tokyo, this figure is even lower – 0.99. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) emphasizes that a coefficient of 2.1 is required for stable population reproduction.
The average age of the Japanese is 49.9 years, which is significantly higher than in the United States, where this figure is 38.9 years.
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Other measures against the demographic crisis
For decades, Japan has been trying to stop the decline in birth rates. Since the 1990s, the government has required employers to provide generous maternity leave, introduced childcare subsidies, and started paying cash assistance to parents. This year, Tokyo authorities even launched their own dating app to help single people find partners and get married.
However, according to official statistics, the country’s birth rate has been declining over the past eight years.
The introduction of a four-day workweek could solve some of the problems associated with a heavy work culture that particularly affects working women. In Japan, the gap between men and women in the distribution of household responsibilities is one of the largest among OECD countries. Women perform five times more unpaid work, including child and elderly care, than men, according to the International Monetary Fund.
More than half of the women who have fewer children than they would like explain this by the increased household workload that another child would bring.
Will a four-day week help?
Research shows that shortening the work week can help to distribute household responsibilities more evenly. According to a global trial of a four-day workweek in six countries, men spent 22% more time on childcare and 23% more on housework.
Experts, however, warn that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
“I am convinced that there is no approach that will work for everyone. What works in one industry or country may not work in another,”
– said Julia Gobsbawm, founder of the consulting company Workathon.
Nevertheless, a four-day workweek improves employee productivity and well-being, said Peter Miskovich, global head of the future of work at JLL.
“Less stress and burnout, better sleep, lower costs for employees, and greater focus are all results of such experiments,”
– he emphasizes.
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