No one can precisely predict a child's future income.
But the experiences children gain early can shape the range of work they will be able to choose later. Using a computer, experimenting with AI, and trying programming are not just hobbies. They can become entry points into future opportunities.
According to projections by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), demand for AI and automation-capable workers will reach 7.82 million by 2040, against a supply of just 4.43 million — a shortfall of approximately 3.4 million people.
This is not only a story about a shortage of engineers. It points to a society in which digital skills increasingly affect both employment opportunities and income.
What the Data Already Shows
Current labour market data makes the wage premium for IT skills concrete. IT engineers in Japan earn roughly 1.2 times the all-industry average. Workers with AI-specific competencies command a salary approximately 31% above the Japanese mean. For senior roles that involve designing and overseeing AI systems, the premium exceeds 71%. Positions with strong AI adjacency — consultants, project managers, data architects — now routinely reach annual compensation of ¥9 million or more.
Critically, these income disparities are not confined to specialist engineers. The gap is widening between employees who can use AI tools fluently in their daily work — reading data, automating tasks, designing prompts — and those who cannot, even within the same organisation and role. Digital literacy is becoming a foundational workplace competency, not a specialist one.
"Familiarity" Matters More Than Formal Study
This raises a practical question for parents: how does a child actually acquire IT skills that stick? The answer is less about formal instruction than most people assume. IT competence is not primarily learned from textbooks or in structured lessons. It is built through repeated, open-ended experimentation — trying something, hitting an error, figuring out why, and trying again.
Children who grow up with free access to a computer — who can tinker with it after school, break things, rebuild them, and explore without pressure — develop something that formal study alone cannot produce: an absence of fear. When a new tool appears or an unfamiliar interface is presented, their instinct is to engage rather than freeze. This disposition, cultivated early through play, is the bedrock on which adult digital fluency is built.
Preventing the Inequality from Locking In
The uncomfortable reality is that access to this kind of early, unstructured digital experience depends heavily on family income. Children in households that own a computer can accumulate hours of hands-on practice after school and on weekends. Children without one simply cannot. If IT skills increasingly determine income, and access to IT skills is determined by household wealth, the result is a self-reinforcing cycle of inequality that passes from one generation to the next.
At Digital Kodomo BASE, we provide refurbished computers free of charge to children who lack one at home, and we maintain an open, free-to-use space in Ota Ward where any child can explore computers, programming, and AI at their own pace. Our goal is to interrupt that cycle at the earliest possible point. A child's future income should not be decided by the postcode they were born in or the income bracket of the family they grew up in. Making hands-on digital experience available to every child — not just those whose families can afford it — is the work we are here to do.