As far as I'm aware there have been a number of efforts to counteract declining birth rates - in South Korea, at least. I think this idea is worth exploration but I hope they're giving this great consideration and thinking about this idea in terms of its success in any long term time frame.
More generally I'm wondering if there are more reasons as to why the Tokyo government is pursuing this other than declining birth rates. Wouldn't broader reform be more effective over a dating app? I guess a dating app would be "way easier" to design and manage (if this isn't just two programmers and a parrot in some basement somewhere), but by that metric wouldn't you view this as a half-baked solution to a much larger problem? Declining birth rates is a pretty big reason to look into implementing or passing something that isn't low effort, comparatively? One advantage here is that this wouldn't have misaligned incentives like the dating apps people here are already familiar with. The housing market, financial security, loneliness, work/life balance; this idea is interacting with many themes.
More generally I'm wondering if there are more reasons as to why the Tokyo government is pursuing this other than declining birth rates. Wouldn't broader reform be more effective over a dating app? I guess a dating app would be "way easier" to design and manage (if this isn't just two programmers and a parrot in some basement somewhere), but by that metric wouldn't you view this as a half-baked solution to a much larger problem? Declining birth rates is a pretty big reason to look into implementing or passing something that isn't low effort, comparatively? One advantage here is that this wouldn't have misaligned incentives like the dating apps people here are already familiar with. The housing market, financial security, loneliness, work/life balance; this idea is interacting with many themes.