Japan’s poverty gap has politicians calling for rise in minimum wage, By Gavin Blair, August 14, 2012, Christian Science Monitor: “Having failed to graduate from high school in a country that places significant emphasis on education and where 92 percent of the population graduates, Hiro knew his prospects of a steady job in a Japanese company were slim. But, he says, ‘I never thought it would be this bad. I didn’t ever expect to be rich, but I never thought it would be this tough,’ says the 27-year-old, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of respect to his family. Still, regarding himself as a hard worker, he estimated he could earn a decent wage with his hands. Following four years of regular employment in an automotive parts company when he left school, Hiro has spent seven years working where and when he can. Unable to find regular, full-time employment, he works at factories, construction sites, and anywhere else he is sent by a temporary agency, earning 160,000-180,000 yen ($1,580-1,980) a month, when there is work. Hiro represents a growing number of Japanese living below the poverty line…”
Tag: Japan
Poverty Measurement – Japan
Japan tries to face up to growing poverty problem, By Martin Fackler, April 21, 2010, New York Times: “Satomi Sato, a 51-year-old widow, knew she had it tough, raising a teenage daughter on the less than $17,000 a year she earned from two jobs. Still, she was surprised last autumn when the government announced for the first time an official poverty line – and she was below it. ‘I don’t want to use the word poverty, but I’m definitely poor,’ said Ms. Sato, who works mornings making boxed lunches and afternoons delivering newspapers. ‘Poverty is still a very unfamiliar word in Japan.’ After years of economic stagnation and widening income disparities, this once proudly egalitarian nation is belatedly waking up to the fact that it has a large and growing number of poor people. The Labor Ministry’s disclosure in October that almost one in six Japanese, or 20 million people, lived in poverty in 2007 stunned the nation and ignited a debate over possible remedies that has raged ever since…”
Unemployment and Homelessness in Japan
Japan’s economic downturn pushes more onto streets, By Peter Ford, September 3, 2009, Christian Science Monitor: “By the time the police arrived at 7 a.m. last Monday to move him on from the Ikebukuro subway station where he had spent the night, Isao Ito had been awake for some time. He had been poring over the jobs section of a magazine, and he hadn’t slept well anyway. Newly arrived in the capital in search of work, he said, ‘I haven’t eaten or slept for three days. I’m alone, and I’m nervous about sleeping rough.’ Welcome to the global recession, Japanese style. As Mr. Ito has just found, perhaps nowhere else in the industrialized world is it so easy to slip from just getting by to utter destitution. Some 460,000 people have lost their jobs in Japan since the ‘Lehman shokku,’ as people here call it – the day last September when the collapse of Lehman Bros. bank triggered a worldwide financial crisis. Half of them, like Ito, were on temporary or part-time contracts that gave them no unemployment or other social security insurance…”