Child Benefit (Jidō Teate)

Child Benefit (Jidō Teate) is Japan's national monthly payment to parents and guardians raising children, administered locally but set nationally under a single program with uniform amounts and eligibility rules. Miss the program's 15-day filing window after a birth or a move into a new municipality, and the missed months are gone for good, with no way to claim them retroactively.

Confirm current details with official sources

Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at the Children and Families Agency (こども家庭庁).

Overview

Jidō teate is a single national program. The Children and Families Agency (こども家庭庁, Kodomo Katei-chō) sets the rules, and each municipality administers applications and payments locally.¹ Core eligibility, payment amounts, and the application deadline are the same everywhere in Japan.¹

This research found no confirmed evidence of a nationally tracked supplementary local top-up allowance layered on top of the national jidō teate amounts. This article covers the national program only and does not assert anything about additional municipal-level allowances, since none could be confirmed either way.

Who is eligible

Jidō teate is paid to a parent or guardian raising a child, provided both the recipient and the child are registered residents of Japan through the jūminhyō (resident record).¹²

Foreign nationals are eligible under the same conditions as Japanese nationals once they hold jūminhyō registration. This treatment has applied since a Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare notification effective July 9, 2012, when foreign residents were brought into the standard resident-register system.³²

A recipient who leaves Japan generally keeps entitlement only while their jūminhyō registration remains active, for example during the validity period of a re-entry permit. Entitlement ends on the date the jūminhyō registration is deleted.³

Terminology

Term	Reading	Meaning
児童手当	jidō teate	Child benefit, Japan's national monthly payment for households raising children.1
こども家庭庁	Kodomo Katei-chō	Children and Families Agency, the national agency responsible for the program.1
認定請求書	nintei seikyūsho	The certification request form, the application filed at the municipal office.1
児童手当法	Jidō Teate Hō	The Child Benefit Act, the statute establishing the program.4
特例給付	tokurei kyūfu	"Special benefit," the former reduced flat rate paid to households over the pre-reform income threshold, abolished as part of the October 2024 reform.567
住民票	jūminhyō	The resident record; registration in it determines both Japanese and foreign-national eligibility.2

Payment amounts by age and child order

Since the October 2024 reform, monthly payments follow a simple structure based on a child's age and birth order within the household: ¥15,000 for a first or second child under age 3, ¥10,000 for a first or second child from age 3 through the end of high-school age, and ¥30,000 for a third or later child regardless of age band (as of 2026-07; confirm current figures with the Children and Families Agency).¹⁵⁶

Fee schedule (payment amounts)

Age band	1st / 2nd child	3rd child or later	As of	Source
Under 3 years old	¥15,000/month	¥30,000/month	2026-07 (effective 2024-10)	156
Age 3 through end of high-school age	¥10,000/month	¥30,000/month	2026-07 (effective 2024-10)	156

Before the reform (through September 2024), the amounts followed a lower age-based split, and an income cap applied. Households over a set income threshold received a reduced flat ¥5,000 per month "special benefit" (特例給付, tokurei kyūfu), or nothing at all above a higher threshold (as of 2025-07).⁷

The October 2024 reform abolished this income cap entirely. Multiple municipal administering authorities implementing the national program state plainly that no income-based reduction or exclusion currently applies to the full-rate amounts above (as of 2026-07).¹⁵⁶⁷

Statute text and administrative guidance do not fully agree

A general legal-database rendering of the Child Benefit Act's Article 5 still shows income-threshold language delegating a cutoff amount to cabinet order. Every administrative source reviewed for this article, including the national Children and Families Agency page and two separate municipal implementers, states plainly that the income restriction no longer applies. Treat the abolished income cap as the current operating rule, but note that the exact statutory text of Article 5 was not independently confirmed against the official e-Gov law database for this article.

Determining which child counts as the household's "3rd child or later" for the ¥30,000 rate is not a simple headcount of currently enrolled children. Older siblings can affect the count even after they age out of receiving the benefit themselves (as of 2026-07); see "Third child and order tracking" below for how that counting actually works.¹⁶

Age limit and coverage through age 18

The Child Benefit Act defines an eligible child (児童) as one within the period up to March 31 following their 18th birthday, so coverage runs through the end of the fiscal year in which the child turns 18, commonly described as "high-school age." This replaced the prior "through March 31 following age 15" definition, effective October 1, 2024.⁴¹⁵⁶

Because this age threshold is written directly into the Act itself rather than delegated to a ministerial notice or cabinet order, it only moves again if the Diet amends the Act. That is unlike the payment amounts and income-cap status above, which are set at the ordinance or administrative level.⁴

Application procedure

Filing deadline and backpay rule

The standard rule is straightforward: a benefit payment starts from the month after the month the application is filed.¹

A "15-day exception" (15日特例) softens that rule around a qualifying event. When a birth or a move into a municipality occurs, and the application is filed within 15 days of the day after that event, the application is treated as if filed in the month the event occurred, so payment starts one month earlier than the standard rule would otherwise allow.⁴⁸

Filing after the 15-day window closes does not forfeit the ability to apply at all, but it does forfeit any benefit-months that have already passed. The application is instead treated as filed in the month it actually arrives, and payment starts the following month under the standard rule.¹⁸

Missing the 15-day window loses money permanently

There is no way to recover benefit-months once the 15-day exception window closes. A late application is not backdated further than the standard rule allows, so every month between the qualifying event and the actual filing date is lost for good.

A ward office example illustrates the cutoff: for an event (birth or move-in) on April 30, an application received by May 15 is treated as an April application, so payment starts from April. An application received May 16 or later is treated as a May application, and the April month is lost.⁸

For a baby born in Japan, the 15-day child-benefit deadline is only one of three separate clocks that start running on the birth date itself. Completing one of these procedures does not extend or satisfy any of the others, and for a family with no Japanese-national parent, all three run at the same time: the 14-day birth-registration deadline covered in Birth Registration and the 14-Day Rule, the 15-day child-benefit filing deadline covered here, and the 30-day residence-status deadline covered in Newborn Residence Card: The 30-Day ISA Application.¹⁸

Required documents

Required documents for an initial application (認定請求, nintei seikyū) commonly include the following (as of 2026-07; confirm current figures with your municipal child-welfare office).¹

Document	Who needs it	Notes	As of
Certification request form (認定請求書, nintei seikyūsho)	All applicants	The core application form itself.1	2026-07
Health insurance documentation	All applicants	A copy of the health insurance card, or since the 2024 health-insurance-card transition, a resident's insurance eligibility confirmation certificate or notice.1	2026-07
Bank account details	All applicants	Passbook, cash card, or account-screen image for the account that will receive the benefit.1	2026-07

Employees (被用者) generally also submit a My Number Card registered for health-insurance use, a health-insurance qualification certificate, or proof of pension enrollment, depending on the applicant's employment category (as of 2026-07).¹

There is no fee to file a child benefit application.

Applicants who register a "public funds receipt account" (公金受取口座) through Myna Portal in advance can skip attaching bank-account documentation entirely, since the registered account is used directly for the benefit transfer (as of 2026-07).¹⁹

Registering a public funds account skips the bank paperwork

Register a public funds receipt account through Myna Portal before applying, and you can leave the bank-account documentation out of the application entirely.

For a newborn, or for a family that has just moved into a municipality, this research did not find a documented requirement to attach the birth-registration acceptance certificate itself to the child-benefit application, beyond what the jūminhyō and koseki processing already produces. That is a contrast with the newborn residence-status application, which does require attaching that certificate.¹

Public employees (公務員) file with their own employer rather than with the municipal office, since the employer administers the benefit for its own staff.¹

Where and how to apply

Applications are filed with the child-welfare or equivalent section of the municipal (ward, city, or town) office covering the applicant's registered residence.¹

Filing methods vary by municipality but commonly include in-person filing at the counter, filing by mail (where the date of arrival at the office, not the postmark date, counts as the filing date), and electronic filing via Myna Portal for applicants who hold a My Number Card (as of 2026-07).⁹ Confirm which methods your specific municipality accepts before choosing one.

Electronic filing through Myna Portal requires a My Number Card and either an IC card reader for a computer or a compatible smartphone. Applicants without a My Number Card cannot use the electronic channel and must file on paper (as of 2026-07).⁹

Foreign resident eligibility

Residency registration requirement

Both the recipient (parent or guardian) and the child generally must be registered residents of Japan through the jūminhyō. This registration status, not the specific status-of-residence category held, is the controlling mechanism for foreign-national eligibility.³²

Jūminhyō registration itself is limited to people holding a period of stay of more than 3 months: mid- to long-term residents, special permanent residents, and a few narrower categories. The child benefit program applies this same test to foreign nationals, treating them the same as Japanese nationals once registered.²³

An exception exists for a child who is temporarily overseas, for example for study, where the family can show the child maintains their base of life in Japan. This exception exists in the statute, but this research could not independently confirm its detailed conditions, such as any maximum duration or specific documentation required, from a source that stated them plainly. Treat the exception as existing in general terms only, and confirm the specific conditions with your municipal office if this applies to your household.³⁴

This registration-based mechanism for foreign nationals predates the October 2024 reform. It dates to a 2012 notification following an amendment to the Basic Resident Register Act, and was not itself changed by the 2024 reform, which affected amounts, the income cap, and the age ceiling rather than the foreign-resident eligibility test.³²

Common exclusions

A foreign national holding a status of residence with a period of stay of 3 months or less, such as an ordinary Temporary Visitor or Short-Term Stay status, does not qualify, because such a person is not entered in the jūminhyō in the first place.²

A person without any valid, registered status of residence, for example someone who has overstayed an authorized period, likewise cannot be entered in the jūminhyō and so cannot meet the registration-based eligibility test. This follows from the registration mechanism itself; no source reviewed for this article addressed undocumented status by name directly.²

Diplomats and other officially accredited representatives are excluded from jūminhyō registration by the same rule that governs short-term visitors, and so do not qualify through this mechanism.²

In practice, foreign parents commonly qualify while holding statuses such as Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services, Skilled Labor, Specified Skilled Worker, Permanent Resident, Spouse of Japanese National, or Long-Term Resident. These are examples of the kinds of statuses that carry jūminhyō registration; the underlying test is the registration itself, not the visa category by name.¹⁰

Good to know

Information staleness: October 2024 expansion

A major reform took effect October 1, 2024, and many English-language sources online, including some published well after that date, still describe the pre-reform rules. The reform abolished the income cap, extended coverage to the end of high-school age (previously the end of middle-school age), raised the 3rd-child-or-later rate, and changed the payment schedule.

One professional Japanese-language source dated September 2025, over a year after the reform, still described the pre-reform income cap, the ¥5,000 special-benefit tier, and coverage ending at age 15. That illustrates how easily outdated figures persist in circulation even in relatively recent content. Check the publication or update date on any source you read about this topic, and treat anything describing an income cap or coverage ending at age 15 as out of date.⁵⁶¹⁰

Backpay timing and lost months

Filing after the 15-day exception window closes permanently forfeits the months that have already passed, with no way to recover them retroactively beyond that window. Benefit payment normally starts the month after filing, and the 15-day exception is the only mechanism that backdates the start month to the month of the birth or move itself, reaching back only that one month.¹⁸

The practical implication is that the sooner an application is filed after a birth or a move, the less backpay risk a family carries. Waiting to gather every optional document before filing is rarely worth the delay, since the core form and a health-insurance document are usually enough to start the clock.¹

Payment frequency and bank account

The payment schedule itself changed in the same October 2024 reform, moving from 3 payments a year to 6 payments a year (as of 2026-07; confirm current figures with the Children and Families Agency). Before the reform, jidō teate was paid three times a year (February, June, and October), each installment covering the preceding four months.¹⁶

Since the reform, it is paid six times a year (as of 2026-07), in even-numbered months (February, April, June, August, October, and December), with each installment covering the preceding two months. Parents relying on older guidance describing the 3x/year schedule may be surprised by the smaller, more frequent payments, or miscalculate how many months a given payment actually covers.¹⁶

Payment is made by automatic transfer to the bank account registered on the application, or to a public funds receipt account if one was registered through Myna Portal.¹

Third child and order tracking

"Third child or later" (第3子以降) is counted from the oldest child downward among a household's dependent children. The child receiving the ¥30,000 rate does not need to be under any particular age cap to trigger it, but which siblings count toward that ordinal position is itself age-limited (as of 2026-07).¹⁶

The October 2024 reform extended sibling-counting eligibility for the multi-child rate from "through high-school age" to "through the fiscal year the sibling turns 22," roughly university age, provided the parent still bears that sibling's living costs and day-to-day care. A sibling old enough to no longer receive the benefit themselves can still count toward the household's "3rd child" ordinal position under this extended rule.⁶

Claiming this extended count for a university-age sibling is not automatic. It requires submitting a specific confirmation form, the "confirmation of custody-equivalent care and cost-of-living burden" (監護相当・生計費の負担についての確認書). Without filing that form, a family can lose the ¥30,000 rate they would otherwise be entitled to for a younger child who is genuinely their 3rd child once the older sibling is counted.⁶

See also

• Birth Registration and the 14-Day Rule
• Newborn Residence Card: The 30-Day ISA Application
• Citizenship for Children Born in Japan
• Jūminhyō: Japan's Residence Record Explained

References

Footnotes

1. こども家庭庁 (Children and Families Agency). 「児童手当制度のご案内」. https://www.cfa.go.jp/policies/kokoseido/jidouteate/annai ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰

2. 総務省 (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). 「外国人住民に係る住民基本台帳制度」. https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/jichi_gyousei/c-gyousei/zairyu/index.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. 厚生労働省 (MHLW). 「児童手当法における外国人に係る事務の取扱いについて」（平成24年6月13日雇児発第613001号）. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/web/t_doc?dataId=00tb8435&dataType=1&pageNo=1 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. 児童手当法 (Child Benefit Act), full text, via 法令リード legal-text database. https://hourei.net/law/346AC0000000073 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. 大津市 (Otsu City). 「児童手当制度改正について（令和6年10月1日施行）」. https://www.city.otsu.lg.jp/soshiki/015/1406/g/jidoteate/63796.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

6. 大阪府 (Osaka Prefecture). 「児童手当の制度改正（拡充）（令和6年10月分以降）」. https://www.pref.osaka.lg.jp/o090135/kateishien/teate/jite_202410.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

7. パスメド (Passmed). 「児童手当の所得制限が撤廃！第3子以降も増額：2024年10月以降」. https://passmed.co.jp/setsuzei/child-support-allowance ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. 江戸川区 (Edogawa City). 「（7）15日特例とは何ですか？」. https://www.city.edogawa.tokyo.jp/e049/qa/kosodate/kosodate/teate/teate007.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

9. 大田区 (Ota City). 「児童手当（電子申請・郵送申請が可能です）」. https://www.city.ota.tokyo.jp/seikatsu/kodomo/teate/jidouteate/jidou.html ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. fuji-shoshi.net (行政書士事務所). 「外国人家庭は児童手当を受け取れる？条件と申請のポイントを解説」. https://fuji-shoshi.net/2025/09/04/child-allowance-for-foreigners-2/ ↩ ↩²