# public spending

Tokyo’s Fertility Rebound: How Big Cash and Free Services Are Turning Babies Into a Public Good

Tokyo’s bold package of cash payments, free services and subsidies — financed at roughly ¥2 trillion a year — appears to have nudged births higher in 2025 after years of decline. The metropolis’s experiment suggests that reducing the explicit and implicit costs of childrearing can influence fertility, but it raises questions about fiscal sustainability and regional divergence.