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Posted on 01/06/2008 11:55:09 AM PST by MinorityRepublican
France's success in raising its total fertility rate to 2.005 is attracting attention in Japan, where government demographic data released Tuesday showed the nation's number of newborns and total fertility rate remained low in 2007.
What national measures resulted in the French having more babies than the Japanese?
Seiko Fujii, 37, who lives with her 35-year-old French husband and two sons, aged 5 and 3, in Antony, a suburb of Paris, said: "I was only able to have a second son because I live in this country. It would have been impossible in Japan."
Fujii quit her job when her first son was born in 2002, and then began a master's degree in business administration at the University of Paris. She had her second son in June 2004, when she was writing her master's thesis.
At the time, Fujii's husband, who has worked mainly as a university lecturer, also was writing his doctoral thesis.
The couple's annual household income at the time was about 42,000 euro (6.72 million yen).
In 2003, when the couple had only one child, they paid 1,500 euro (240,000 yen) in income tax for the year. In 2004, after their second son was born, the amount they were taxed almost halved to 840 euro (130,000 yen).
France's extensive social welfare system relies on relatively high taxation. The nation's value added tax rate is 19.6 percent and its income tax rates are much higher than Japan's.
But France's taxation system applies what is known as family coefficient rules--which means the larger the family, the lower the tax levied.
Fujii's family also enjoys other benefits under the French system. And a family with three or more children benefits from the system even more.
For a household with an income the same as Fujii's, the total income tax paid by a family with one child is 700 euro lower than a family with no child, while a family with two children pays 1,400 euro less.
A family with three children pays 2,300 euro (370,000 yen) less income tax than a family with no child because the tax breaks are greater for families with three or more children.
Similar tax breaks are given for resident and real estate taxes.
Also, if parents use certified child care givers who take care of children at the parents' home or a day care center, part of the cost is tax-deductible.
Fujii and her husband used a child care giver four days a week, for which they paid 510 euro (80,000 yen) a month.
But Caisse Nationale d'Allocations Familiales, a government organization that provides financial aid to families with children, subsidized the cost.
Half of the remaining child care cost was refunded via income tax deductions. As a result, the couple's monthly burden was reduced to about 115 euro (20,000 yen).
Fujii said, "It was so helpful as I received support at the time when I was struggling the most--when I started a new job and needed child care."
An increasing number of couples in France are marrying and having a child later in life, and about 10 percent choose not to have a child.
Despite this trend, however, France's total fertility rate rose to above 2.
This is because about 10 percent of women have four or more children, and 20 percent of couples are currently raising three or more children.
Providing tax breaks for each child has encouraged French couples to have more children.
Fujii's father is Takeshi Fujii, a former director of the Cabinet Councillor's Office on Internal Affairs who has written books about social welfare systems across Europe.
He said: "Assistance for raising children through taxation has a big effect on high and middle income earners, whose tax burdens are heavy. The [French] system encourages people with money to spare to have two, three or more children."
France's total fertility rate fell to the 1.2 level around the time of World War I, and the country became extremely concerned about its falling birth rate.
When France was invaded and occupied by Germany in World War II, leaders of the country regretted that the lower birthrate had resulted in a weaker nation.
Since then, political and business leaders in France have taken the initiative in formulating the family support policy.
A senior official of the French Health and Solidarity Ministry said: "As allowances are fixed or means tested, high and middle income earners don't reap much benefit. So assistance through tax breaks is essential."
Very interesting. I wonder how many of these families are of French ethnicity. Japan doesn't have many citizens who are not Japanese, but the benefits to France of buying more Moslem children seem dubious at best.
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Democrats already look upon us as property of the government.
My guess is that most of the increase is due to immigrants or immigrants’ children, most of whom did not come speaking and reading fluent French and have cultural views broadly different from those of the France of, say, 1960.
France has more Muslim immigrants than Japan.
Japan would have to import other peoples to do the breeding and that they won't do.
Although these fertility numbers (in this article, and in another recently added by the same poster) are interesting, I think it would be much more useful to know the rate of offspring born to parents who support themselves and the children. If the parents are being supported by the taxpayers, it's likely the children will be as well, making the contributor-to-noncontributor ratio worse rather than better.
My wife, who is Japanese, and I had our daughter in Japan, and then promptly left. It is impossible to pay all the bills, taxes, and have kids in Japan unless you are well off.
Furthermore, our daughter had an extreme case of jaundice thanks to the hospital staff and their ineptness. This cost us a couple thousand more in maternity payments which ARE NOT COVERED by universal health care. Japanese universal health care is basically a tax-payer supported nursing home of hospitals anyway.
Just clueless about the type and scale of forces at work here...
By whose criteria is the birth of more French a “success”?
But you are not suppose to point out the elephant in the room.
Somebody needs to do the math!! it does not make sense!!
Salary converted from Euro to USD $50,000.00
Paid in Taxes (One Child); $1,800.00
Paid in Taxes (Two Child); $1,000.00
Baby Sitter 12 months $7,000.00
Is it just me?
Where is the fish in this story?
1 Euro was worth $1.21 or close in 2003
Sounds like a plan that works.
Civilized countries in Europe need to do something similar. Birth rates in normal countries like France, Italy, Ireland have been down. Normal countries are eliminating themselves.
Creatures in other countries noticed, and started infiltrating into civilized countries and reproducing rapidly, while collecting benefits.
The United States should do something similar, but give benefits only to citizens.
Most people today don’t have children ‘cause:
1. The want stuff
2. The stuff they want is very expensive
3. They are too career focused to afford the stuff
4. They are too selfish (might be less selfish if they went to Church)
5. And lastly: Men don’t want to get married ‘cause they get the milk for free (if y’know what I mean)
Because the French are letting Muzzies overwhelm them and the Japanese have better taste and brains.
bttt
For the longest time, we were told that immigrant women would actually have less children than at home, but it’s the opposite. Women from Morocco, for instance, have more 5 children per woman in France, and less than that at home. It’s obviously because the French tax payers are more generous and gullible than the hard nosed Moroccan government.
The French system also encourages polygamy. It is very common for a Muslim man to have an official wife and several "cousins", all female, living in the same subsidized-rent house, all of them getting pregnant once a year. The "cousins" are then considered to be "isolated parents" by the French Social Services (hey, no official hubby, right?) They can thus rake in the big bucks in the form of special financial aid for isolated parenthood.
The rates are published here: http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F389.xhtml.
Let me summarize: A pregnant "isolated parent" woman with no official income (the common case for unemployed wives of illegal aliens) gets 619.69 E ($898) per month while she's pregnant. After the first kid is born, the "allocation" goes to 861.53 E ($1249) per month. Second child, 1075.59 E ($1559) per month. Each extra child is another 188.93 E ($274). So with four children, this woman will get $2107 per month. That will allow you to leave easily in France, especially when your rent and electricity is heavily subsidized and when you don't drive.
And you are wondering while illegal aliens flock to France? They'd be stupid not to.
Before long, we will be calling it the Islamic Republic of France.
bttt
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