By RYUICHI HISANAGA/ Staff Writer
August 31, 2022 at 16:55 JST
A record low 2,944 children were waiting to be admitted to day care centers or other facilities as of April, according to health ministry statistics released on Aug. 30.
The tally fell below 3,000 for the first time since the ministry began collecting data in 1994.
The ministry cited the fallen birthrate and more parents refraining from applying to day care centers due to infection fears amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, in addition to there being more authorized day care centers and nurseries.
The number of children on waiting lists declined for the fifth year in a row to around one-ninth of its peak of 26,081 in 2017.
Of the 1,741 municipalities across the country, 1,489, or 85.5 percent, had no children waiting for admission.
Ten municipalities, or 0.6 percent, still have 50 or more children waiting.
For the second consecutive year, no municipalities had 200 or more children waiting.
Kagoshima city had the largest number of children waiting, at 136, followed by 119 in Yachiyo, Chiba Prefecture; 100 in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture; 76 in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture; and 75 in Tokyo’s Machida.
Sixty percent of children on waiting lists were concentrated in urban areas, such as the Tokyo metropolitan area and the Kinki region centering on Osaka.
When these municipalities were asked why they could not reduce the number of children on waiting lists to zero, the most common reply, at 47 percent, was that “demands for day care services were uneven, depending on the area.”
However, local governments did not count 72,547 children as being on a waiting list because one of their parents was taking child care leave.
This figure has fallen by only 1,123 children compared to the previous year. The tally includes children using child care services that companies provide.
As of April, around 2.73 million children are using day care centers, 12,000 fewer than a year earlier, marking the first decline.
While mainly urban areas still have children on waiting lists, an increasing number of day care centers are seeing the number of children fall below their quotas.
The nationwide average for the ratio of children to quotas of day care centers was 89.7 percent as of April.
The ratio has been declining each year.
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