Nagi: Japan's miracle town

Where 47% of families have 3 children

Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida says that declining birth rates are “the biggest crisis Japan faces”. Japan currently has a Total Fertility Rate of 1.2 children per woman and is ageing very rapidly, predicted to lose half its population by 2100. Between 1990 and 2023, the number of under 15s in Japan decreased by 35%, while the number of over 65s increased by 144%.

But as Japan’s birth rate has remained stubbornly low over the past twenty years, one community has successfully doubled its own. 

Welcome to Nagi 

Nagi is a town in the Okayama Prefecture of Japan, with a population of only 5,700 people. The town’s official mascot is a cuddly taro root, but the area is also known for its wagyu beef, wasabi, and rice paddies. Nagi’s local tourist attractions are modest: you can hike up Mount Nagi (look out for bears) or visit the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art, housed in an ox-blood coloured cube. 

In 2005, Nagi’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was 1.41 children per woman, a little above Japan’s TFR of 1.2 but not remarkably so. Yet by 2014, Nagi’s TFR was 2.8 – not only a staggering increase, but well above replacement rate fertility of 2.1. And by 2019, it had climbed again to 2.95. 

As of 2021, Nagi’s TFR has slipped slightly but remains at an impressive 2.68 children per woman. Astonishingly, 47% of all Nagi households have three or more children. This is in a country where nearly 50% of households with children have only one child, and those with three or more account for only 12.7%. 

Nagi chooses children.

In 2002, Nagi was concerned about its future as an ageing community. Mayor Masachika Oku told the LA Times that the town decided to implement cost-cutting measures and free up cash to invest in a new plan for its future: the prioritisation of children and young families. 

Nagi began by introducing a baby bonus of 100,000 yen – then around $1000 – for parents upon having a second child and made healthcare free for children until junior high school. Since then, Nagi’s offer to parents has only expanded.

Today, the baby bonus begins with a couple’s first, rather than second child and healthcare is free for children throughout high school. In 2007, the Nagi Child Home opened, acting as a social and support hub for parents but also offering childcare for $2 an hour while parents run errands (similarly informal childcare offered by a babysitter would usually cost around $13 an hour in Japan). A housing assistance programme offers young families three bedroom homes for a subsidised monthly rent of 50,000 yen (around $340). 

Parents choose Nagi.

Part of Nagi’s success is certainly down to the fact that it has turned itself into a beacon for young parents and couples keen to start their families. Nagi’s mayor is explicit that part of the long-term plan to maintain the town as a living community is to encourage young people to move there. 

Yet Nagi is no top-tier economic destination. Its ability to encourage young people to relocate is undoubtedly hampered by the general trend of urban intensification in Japan. Young Japanese people are keen to move to big cities like Tokyo, not to rural communities like Nagi. This exodus has left the Japanese countryside littered with abandoned homes that nobody wants.

And while Nagi does offer employment opportunities, they are heavily concentrated in industry and agriculture. The town’s nearest train station is a half hour drive away, and it would take you over three hours to reach Tokyo by public transport (and double that if you drove). 

In short, though Nagi’s forward thinking policies undoubtedly draw families and prospective parents looking for a community that will support them and this is a contributor to Nagi’s success, I think there are other contributors to its astonishingly high fertility rate. Namely, the effect of consistent pro-child policies in making having a family easier and the culture these policies have created.

A self-propelling culture of parenting

It’s clear from numerous media interviews with resident parents that Nagi’s ongoing commitment to making their lives better has made it easier for them to start families and have an extra child. But these policies have also likely been successful in creating a positive self-propelling culture of parenting. Yuko Sugawara – a Nagi resident who spoke to The Guardian last year when she already had one child and was pregnant with her second – exemplified this when she said of moving to the town and its child-friendly policies:

“It’s not really about the money…We want our daughter to have a little brother and sister…And when you look around and see families with three or even four children, you think, we can do that too.”

Nagi is reaping the benefits from consistently and practically choosing to make life easier for parents wherever it can. But these policies are strengthened by positive, reverberating cultural effects. By simply knowing more people with children and with larger families, Nagi residents like Yuko are encouraged to feel that having another child is achievable for them too. The town’s policies are then there to support them practically with that decision. 

Conclusion

Practicality, consistency & universality

Nagi is frequently visited by senior national politicians and officials from other Japanese regions keen to understand and replicate its success, as well as by international delegations. Though it is much smaller, Nagi’s story is reminiscent of another region that Boom has written about: South Tyrol, the province defying Italy’s birth dearth. Like the people of Nagi, South Tyroleans have benefitted from decades of practical, child-friendly policy making. 

The key, replicable lessons of Nagi and South Tyrol – two very different areas in very different parts of the world – are practicality, consistency, and universal support. Nagi and South Tyrol’s policy makers have focused on practical, positive policies to support parents. They have consistently maintained these policies, only ever expanding rather than narrowing them. And they have not attempted to heavily target these policies, but rather to focus on supporting all parents. In sticking to these principles, these areas have then likely benefitted from self-propelling cultural effects, as residents’ expectations and life plans are shaped by the example of those around them.

Phoebe