Can Child Benefits Shape Parents' Attitudes toward Childrearing in Japan?: Effects of Child Benefit Policy Expansions

This study clarifies the effects of the expansion of Japan's child benefit policy (CB) on parental attitudes toward childrearing environments in terms of culture, education, and childcare. A fixed-effect model was employed on data from Osaka University's gPreference Parameters Study, h which provides large-scale longitudinal microdata covering not only specific individuals but also their families. Compared with the control group of parents with only high-school children aged 16-18, the CB expansion, on average, increased the priority given to childcare environments by one grade. The subsample analysis revealed that parents with only pre-school children (0-6 years old) came to hope for a better childcare environment and those with only primary-school-aged children (7-12 years old) demanded a better educational environment. Moreover, by dividing the respondents by whether the household income was above the mean, parents with higher household income levels were shown to increase the priority they gave to the educational environment in exchange for a decrease in the priority given to the childcare environment. However, parents in the lower household income groups increased the priority they gave to the childcare environment. These results indicate that the unpredicted CB expansion led parents to react differently to the neighborhood environment, depending on their child's age and household income. Hence, the most important implication of this study is that the government should carefully choose target households in light of policy objectives and not increase the opportunity gaps between households when introducing new financial support policies.