The number of children on nursery school waiting lists in Japan as of Oct. 1 last year grew 7,695 from a year before to 55,433, up for the third straight year, the welfare ministry has said.
In March 2017, the ministry expanded the scope of the waiting lists to include cases in which parents decided not to return to work and extended parental leave because they could not find nurseries with enough space to accept their children.
The waiting lists tend to be especially long in urban areas. Yokohama had 1,877 children on waiting lists, the largest figure among all municipalities, followed by the city of Saitama with 1,345 and the city of Osaka with 1,335.
The government aims to eliminate the need for waiting lists by increasing the number of spaces at nurseries and other facilities by a total of 320,000 by the end of March 2021.
