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The government argues that raising women’s wages and status in the labor market will also increase fertility rates, pointing to countries like Sweden and Denmark that have both higher female employment and higher fertility. The original goal was to have women fill a third of senior business positions by 2020 that has since been scaled back to 15 percent. As part of this, the government has required corporations to increase the appointment of women to management positions. These changes partly aim to encourage more women to join the workforce, the so-called womenomics plan to raise the female employment rate from 68 percent to 73 percent by 2020.
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In addition, Abe pledged to spend 2 trillion yen ($17.6 billion) on education and childcare, promising free preschool for all children aged three to five and for children aged two or younger from low-income households. He also created a new cabinet position dedicated to reversing Japan’s demographic decline. In September 2015, Abe announced an “ Abenomics 2.0” platform that centers on raising the birth rate and expanding social security. The working-age Japanese population has contracted by 6 percent over the past decade, and Japan could lose more than a third of its population over the next fifty years. Japan’s labor shortage continues to be a serious factor in its economic stagnation.
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Although his coalition has held a strong parliamentary majority for more than five years, progress has come slowly. In 2014, Abe announced a broad reform package, including corporate tax cuts, agriculture liberalization, labor market reform, and initiatives to overhaul regulation of the energy, environmental, and health-care sectors. But structural reform, which many analysts say will determine the success of Abenomics, still has far to go. What are the prospects for structural reform?Ībe’s win in October 2017 elections bolstered support for his policies.
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Despite such worries, in January 2018 the bank decided to continue with a negative interest rate of minus 0.1 percent. The BOJ joined the central banks of the European Union, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland as the only ones to push some rates below the “zero bound.” The BOJ’s negative rates, as well as its asset purchases, have continued into 2018, causing some economists to warn that these low rates damage the banking system and can lead to speculative bubbles. With Japan’s economy remaining weak, in January 2016 Kuroda made the unexpected decision of introducing negative interest rates in a fresh bid to spur lending and investment. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), by contrast, both stand below 25 percent of their respective GDPs. The scale of the purchases is unmatched anywhere in the world: the value of the assets held by the BOJ has exceeded 70 percent of GDP, while the assets of the U.S. How does Abenomics' monetary policy work?
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