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The story
According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s “Overview of the 2025 Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions,” the average income per household with children was ¥8,573,000 — ¥2,821,000 more than the all-household average of ¥5,752,000. Even so, the finding that 60% of these households still say life is a struggle sparked a stir on 5channel’s News Speed+ board. Threads filled up with talk of the cost-of-living gap between city centers and rural areas, alongside comments from couples earning over ¥20 million a year who say they can “barely manage one child,” and others earning around ¥6 million who say they’ve “never once felt like it was hard.” The discussion laid bare how what really shapes the feeling of hardship isn’t the raw income number, but how the money actually gets spent.
For households with children, even a decent income can leave little cash on hand at the end of the month — isn’t that a common feeling? When education costs and mortgage payments overlap, it gets hard to see just how much slack is really left in the budget.
According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s “Overview of the 2025 Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions,” the average income per household with children was ¥8,573,000.
That’s ¥2,821,000 above the all-household average of ¥5,752,000.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
That's basically the same as ¥4 million back when the yen was at 80 to the dollar, so of course it's tough.
In central Tokyo, that's pretty rough, honestly.
Just have your company buy the assets for you.
The people raising kids right now are the same ones glued to social media, so they feel like they'll die if they don't keep up with everyone else.
Families leasing an Alphard on residual credit aren't the ones sending their kids to private school, you know.
By that math, ours is around ¥4 million, and I still haven't really felt like it's that hard.
Rural areas and central Tokyo are two different worlds. We're a couple in our early 30s with household income comfortably over ¥20 million, and we're still agonizing over having even a first kid.
You've got it right. A gross salary of ¥10 million? You can't even manage one kid on that, lol.
We're at ¥25 million household income and we're only just now trying for our first.
Totally get it. We're at ¥35 million household income and we're still on the fence about having kids at all.
That's gotta be someone living in the "24 wards," lol (Tokyo actually only has 23 wards — a jab at how out-of-touch that sounds).
What's with this "average household income of ¥8.75 million" thing anyway? You don't hit that income level unless both spouses are full-time regular employees.
This just proves non-regular workers can't have kids.
Having kids while working non-regular jobs is basically child abuse at that point, lololol. Unless your parents are loaded, that is.
Since it's "income," the article's household gross salary works out to about ¥11 million.
And even then, one kid is a no-go. It's only once household income clears ¥20 million that having even one kid starts to feel realistic.
Then again, nobody trusts what gets posted here in the first place.
At big Tokyo companies, second-year new hires easily clear ¥7.5 million. If that kind of couple moves in together and marries, household income of ¥18 million by age 28 is totally common.
Looking at my university friends, this is just normal these days.
The average age on this board is over 50 — there's no way young people are posting here. This is the Ice Age generation (Japan's "employment ice age" cohort who graduated into a brutal job market).
Well, only a handful of people actually land jobs at big city-center companies. And raising the kind of high-achieving kid who can pull that off takes money.
They really do call it "parent gacha" (the idea that which parents you're born to is a random draw that decides your life) for a reason.
As long as you've got the will to do it.
You just live within your means.
Even without much money, you can still live happily.
Bragging about being poor is just sad, cut it out.
Feel sorry for the kids.
After switching jobs and getting promoted I'm at ¥11 million now, but my lifestyle hasn't changed at all from when I made ¥6.5 million.
You don't need much money to be happy.
How old are you?
I live in Tokyo, I'm 30, and I make ¥14 million.
Major energy company, TOPIX 100.
Don't tell me you're in your 40s or older?
People aren't thinking about what happens if the kid has a developmental issue, stops going to school, or becomes a hikikomori (a shut-in who withdraws from society).
This country is mass-producing shut-ins.
It's almost entirely determined by genetics.
Some people are just high-risk and some are low-risk.
Makes you wonder why it's actually increasing these days.
Selection pressure is getting stronger, so you'd think it would naturally be decreasing instead.
Both kids go to private school,
you keep two safe-choice cars — a Crown and an Alphard —
the wife works a part-time job for fun earning ¥70,000 a month and keeps all of it as her own spending money,
the family eats out somewhere non-chain every week,
and you take economy-class overseas trips for Golden Week, Obon, and New Year's.
Apparently you can pull all that off on a household income of around ¥25 million.
Having two kids, being able to eat out on weekends, take one family trip a year, build a new home in the greater Tokyo area, buy a new car every five years, put your kids through the private middle-school entrance exam gauntlet, and get them into a private science/engineering university program.
Man, I just want to eat some sashimi…
What are the people who say it's tough actually spending their money on?
Are both of them hitting the pachinko parlor together or something?
I have known couples where both drink and smoke and then complain they have no money.
At least let your kids sit the middle-school entrance exams.
It's the whole exam-prep obsession, isn't it.
The world is changing, but people are still clinging to academic credentials.
Going forward, alumni networks might still matter, but the credential itself won't count for much.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
This figure comes from the average in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s annual Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions, and it’s worth noting that averages like this can be skewed upward by a small number of high-income households. As pointed out in the thread, the “income” referenced here is closer to gross total income before tax and social insurance deductions — it is not take-home pay. That means it isn’t accurate to simply read “¥8.57 million in income” as “comfortable living,” since for households raising children with overlapping education costs and mortgage payments, the statistical figure and the lived experience can diverge sharply. Where opinions split in the thread was over how, even at the same income level, the feeling of “struggling” can vary enormously depending on where you live and how you allocate your spending — comments comparing the high cost of city living against life in rural areas came up again and again. It’s also easy to overlook that, being an average rather than a median, this number may be pulled upward by high-income households.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5channel (News Speed+) thread “👦👧 Average income for households with children is ¥8.573 million, yet 60% say “life is a struggle”.”
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