Japan unveiled a record 92.29 trillion yen ($1 trillion) budget Friday for the next fiscal year, reflecting the prime minister's campaign pledge to boost spending for child support and slash wasteful outlay for public works. The budget for the year starting in April 2010 came as Japan's economy - the world's second-largest - struggled to shake off its worst recession since World War II amid deflation. “This budget is to protect lives. I made all my efforts to secure budgets to support child-rearing, employment, the environment and welfare,” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told a news conference after his Cabinet approved the budget. Spending on social welfare, which includes expenditures of monthly child allowances - one of Hatoyama's key election promises - will jump by 10 percent from the initial budget of the current fiscal year to 27.3 trillion yen, a Finance Ministry official was quoted as saying by Foreign News Agencies. The government will start giving families 13,000 yen a month per child through junior high from April 2010 to help ease child-rearing costs and encourage more women have babies. Japan has the lowest percentage of children among 31 major countries, trailing Germany and Italy, according to a government report. In contrast, the nation's elderly population is swelling.
