The system that nursery fee fluctuates depending on the annual household’s income is only applied to license kindergarten. Non-license kindergarten’s nursery fee is fixed uniformly regardless of how much you have annual income.

Let’s see how nursery fee rate is decided and how much you should pay for child care with your annual income in Japan.

4 conditions that decide your nursery fee

Household income

Household income is the totalized income of all the supporters of family members. If you are a single mother or a single father, household income is equal to your income but if you live with your wife or husband and both of you work, household income is totalized one of your husband’s or wife’s and yours

First thing first, you need to understand the relation between revenue and income. If you are self-employed, your income is calculated by deducting sales from expenditures. If you are an employee, your income is calculated by deducting your salary from tax deduction.

Nursery fee is decided from a part of resident tax (income levy) calculated based on household’s income. Until 2014, income tax is a criteria to decide individual nursery fee but in 2015, resident tax has become newly criteria to decide individual nursery fee.

Even if self-employed mother and father don’t submit tax return application to calculate nursery fee, nursery fee is easily calculated because Individual resident tax is grasped by a municipality.

The government classifies types of households in 8 stages such as livelihood protection households, municipal tax exempted households, all 6 stages of income-based levy households, and shows the payment standard to these 8 stages. It is important for your to understand which stage you are in to know how much nursery fee is roughly.

Depending on the parent’s income, the amount of payment for nursery fee is different individually.

Grant approval (Shikyu-Nintei “支給認定”)

Grant approval is a procedure to go through when leaving your child on a licensed kindergarten in association with new support system for children and child rearing regulated by the government in 2015 . This procedure is to judge and decide how much nursery service is needed for applicants in order to receive nursery and education service as necessary qualitatively and quantitatively when considering the parents lifestyle.

If you hope your child to enter a private kindergarten that supports the present nursery system continuously without adopting new nursery system or a kindergarten that is not subject to new nursery system such as a non-licensed kindergarten, you don’t need to receive grant approval from a municipality.

For example, if you hope your child to enter a kindergarten adopting this new nursery system, you need to have a reason corresponding to “conditions of necessity of nursery care” required by a municipality in order to receive child care from a kindergarten. The followings are the conditions.

  • You are working
  • You are pregnant or you have a newborn baby
  • You have illness or are handicapped
  • You nurse your mother or father, or someone in relatives in your house or in hospital
  • You engage in disaster recovery activity
  • You are looking for job or preparing to start new business
  • You are under education (going to university or job training center)

Grant approval classification

There are 3 classes depending on the necessity of nursery and the children’s age from No.1 approval to No.3 approval. Depending on the class, available time and nursery facility will change.

No.1 approval A child older than 3 years old before going to elementary school, who only receive school education
No.2 approval (nursery approval) A child older than 3 years old before going to elementary school, who need nursery care
No.3 approval (nursery approval) A child younger than 3 years old, who need nursery care

Quantitative nursery classification

No.1 approval and No.2 approval are additionally classified into “standard nursery time” and “short nursery time” as necessary.

Standard nursery time Maximum 11 hours per day (Utilization time supposing mother’s full time working)
Short nursery time Maximum 8 hours per day (Utilization time supposing mother’s part time working)

Monthly maximum user’s payment standard for No.1 approval

Class User’s payment amount
Livelihood protection household 0 yen
3,000 yen
Income levy household (less than or equal to 77,100 yen) 16,100 yen
Income levy household (less than or equal to 211,200 yen) 20,500 yen
Income levy household (more than or equal to 211,201 yen) 25,700 yen

Monthly maximum user’s payment standard for No.2 approval and No.3 approval

Class
No.1 approval
No.2 approval
User’s payment amount
User’s payment amount
Standard nursery time Short nursery time Standard nursery time Short nursery time
Livelihood protection household 0 yen 0 yen 0 yen 0 yen
Municipal tax exemption household 6,000 yen 6,000 yen 9,000 yen 9,000 yen
Income levy household (less than 48,600 yen) 16,500 yen 16,300 yen 19,500 yen 19,300 yen
Income levy household (less than 97,000 yen 27,000 yen 26,600 yen 30,000 yen 29,600 yen
Income levy household (less than 169,000 yen 41,500 yen 40,900 yen 44,500 yen 43,900 yen
Income levy household (less than 301,000 yen 58,000 yen 57,100 yen 61,000 yen 60,100 yen
Income levy household (less than 397,000 yen 77,000 yen 75,800 yen 80,000 yen 78,800 yen
Income levy household (more than 397,000yen 101,000 yen 99,400 yen 104,000 yen 102,400 yen

Municipality

Here is complicated part. The above table references about monthly maximum user’s payment standards are no more than government standard.

Actually, each municipality is allowed to set arbitrary nursery rate based on this government standard. That’s why nursery fee differs depending on where you live in Japan. It is the same as the government rate system that municipalities decide individual nursery rate by classifying resident tax rate but how many classes of resident tax rate are classified for the corresponding nursery fee is really different depending on the municipality. Of course, its nursery rate is also different.

Let’s see and compare nurser fees of Shinjuku Tokyo, Kobe Hyougo and Fukuoka-shi Fukuoka as example.

Standard nursery time

Municipality
Income levy amount
Younger than 3 years old
Older than 3 years old
3 years old 4 years old and 5 years old
Shinjuku Tokyo More than or equal to 370,000 yen, less than 400,000 yen 48,900 yen (24,450 yen) 23,000 yen (11,500 yen) 18,600 yen (9,300 yen)








More than or equal to 870,000 yen 74,700 yen (37,350 yen) 29,300 yen (14,650 yen) 23,400 yen (11,700 yen)
Kobe Hyougo More than or equal to 397,000 yen 74,000 yen (37,000 yen) 32,800 yen (16,400 yen)
Fukuoka-shi Fukuoka More than or equal to 397,000 yen 83,200 yen (41,600 yen) 30,200 yen (15,100 yen)

The number of children and ages

According to the above table reference, there are many municipalities whose declared nursery fee tends to cost you more in case you have a child younger than 3 years old than in cace you have a child older than or equal to 3 years old.

Which means the government regulates how many teachers need to be assigned to a certain number of children in a kindergarten. For example, according to the government nursery standard, when looking after a couple months old children, 1 or more nursery teachers are assigned to 3 children. When looking after 1 or 2 year old children, 1 or more nursery teachers are assigned to 6 children. When looking after 3 year old children, 1 or more nursery teachers are assigned to 20 children.

 

The younger the children are, the more number of nursery teachers is needed, therefore, nursery fee naturally goes up.

Moreover, the number of children influences on nursery fee as well. In case two or more children enter a kindergarten from the same household, nursery fee will be discounted from the second child. The government sets half of standard nursery fee for the second child as a guide.

Nursery rates put in parenthesis are for the second child in the above referring table.

By the way, for the third child and after it, three municipalities in the example set nursery fee for free.

Childcare time

In new support system for children and child rearing regulated by the government in 2015, different nursery fee is applied to the amount of child care time. A household that necessity of nursery was approved by the authority, has two types of nursery time allocation, which is “standard nursery time” and “short nursery time”.

“Standard nursery time” is maximum 11 hours supposing a supporter who has full time job and “Short nursery time” is maximum 8 hours supposing a supporter who has part time job. Minimum working time for those who can apply for “short nursery time” is decided by each municipality within the range of 48 to be 64 hours a month. Your nursery fee will change which one of conditions your situation corresponds to.

In addition, In case of standard nursery time, you can leave your child for maximum 11 hours within the timezone f normal nursery regulated by each kindergarten without add-on charge. On the contrary, depending on when you leave child in a kindergarten, there is a case that add-on charge generates.

For example, night time nursing after normal nursery time costs you extra charges for extending nursing time. Some of kindergartens set extending nursery fee as monthly add-on fee. When you receive extending nursery service, extra charges are automatically added on regular fee.

Average nursery fee payment of Japanese general household is 20,000 yen

According to the survey for regional child welfare services in 2012 by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in the survey of monthly nursery expense per child, households that pay more than or equal to 20,000 yen to less than 30,000 yen for monthly nursery fee occupy 31.9% ,which is the largest in entire households.

And households that pay more than or equal to 10,000 yen to less than 20,000 yen for monthly nursery fee occupy 23.6%, which is the second largest in entire households.

Households that have many children lower the nursery cost per child but average nursery expense per child for one household is 20,491 yen

The survey for regional child welfare services in 2012
Entire households
Households with one child
Households with two children
Households with three children
less than 10,000 yen 23.5% 20.9% 28.2% 64.5%
More than or equal to 10,000 yen and less than 20,000 yen 23.6% 19.1% 37.2% 32.9%
More than or equal to 20,000 yen and less than 30,000 yen 31.9% 33.5% 29.5% 1.4%
More than or equal to 30,000 yen and less than 40,000 yen 12.4% 15.3% 4.2% 0%
More than or equal to 40,000 yen and less than 50,000 yen 5.6% 7.3% 0.8% 0.4%
More than or equal to 50,000 yen and less than 60,000 yen 2.3% 3.1% 0.1% 0%
More than or equal to 60,000 yen and less than 70,000 yen 0.4% 0.6% 0% 0%
More than 70,000 yen 0.2% 0.2% 0% 0%
Nursery fee per child for one household 20,491yen 22,381yen 15,606 yen 7,900yen

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