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Japan, land of rising
poverty
By J Sean Curtin
Poor Japan. Early this month an
impoverished woman and her three-year-old son were
found starved to death, and while this is an
exception, hungry women and their children are not
an exception in the land once known for rising
wealth, but now plagued by rising poverty.
A new Japanese government survey estimates
that the number of fatherless families has
skyrocketed, hitting 1.22 million in fiscal 2003
in the nation of 128 million. This is the highest
number ever recorded and represents a massive
28.3% increase from the previous survey conducted
five years ago. The figures also show that the
vast majority of children in these households live
far below the poverty line, creating a rapidly
growing underclass of impoverished families.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry
data highlight the complete failure of government
policy to address important social changes that
have occurred over the past decade, particularly
the massive rise in divorces involving children.
Over the past decade, low wages for women,
a non-functional child support payment system, an
inadequate social welfare policy, and a weakening
of traditional family support networks all have
contributed to redrawing the Japanese poverty map.
Previously, elderly households constituted the
bulk of the poor, but today the balance has firmly
shifted to mother-headed families.
Most
lone mothers and their children now live in
poverty, with many experiencing real hardship. In
2001, the average annual income of a lone-mother
family was about 2.52 million yen (US$23,850). The
latest data estimate this has fallen to just 2.12
million yen in fiscal 2002, almost three times
less than the median figure. In 2000, the average
household income was about 6.17 million yen, and
for an elderly household the figure was 3.19
million yen.
Some low-income families are
experiencing such extreme poverty that there have
been a few cases of mothers and their children
dying from malnutrition. One such case was
reported at the beginning of February when a
27-year-old mother and her three-year-old son were
found starved to death in their apartment in
Saitama Prefecture near Tokyo. Police reported
that there was no food in the apartment and the
woman only had eight yen ($0.07) in her purse.
Asia Times Online spoke to an unmarried
mother living on a very low income in snowy
northern Japan. She said: "It is hardest to manage
in winter because of heating costs, especially
this year. I try to stay at work for as long as
possible because it's warm there and my son is in
a well-heated day care center. For mothers like me
day care is free, so it is best he is there for as
long as possible. At home, we stay in one room and
wear blankets to keep us warm." She added, "Ever
since I read about the mother whose baby froze to
death because she could not pay for the
electricity, I feel so worried."
International research has shown that in
developed countries the three primary causes of
single-mother poverty are low wages, non-payment
of child support money by absent fathers and
inadequate social services, such as welfare
programs, tax credits for poor families, free
child care for poor mothers or other systems in
which the state helps the poor by transferring
resources to them. Japan is seriously deficient in
all three categories, creating an environment in
which poverty levels are almost certain to
increase.
That means welfare programs, tax
credits for poor families, free childcare for poor
mothers or any other system in which the state
helps out the poor, transfer state resources from
the rich to the poor or redistributes state
resources.
The new survey calculated that
83% of lone mothers were working, compared with an
average of about 86% for the previous decade. The
employment rates of Japanese lone mothers are the
highest in the industrialized world, although in
recent years they have decreased slightly due to
the long recession and tough job market. Despite
high labor force participation rates, their
average wage has remained extremely low. This is
because Japan has a widening gender-based wage
gap, and in recent years there has been a
proliferation of low-paid non-standard forms of
employment in which many lone mothers are engaged.
Child support system totally
inadequate
Non-payment of child support by
absent fathers is one of the main causes of
poverty for families headed by women, especially
in Japan, which has a completely inadequate
collection system. According to the latest survey,
only 34% of divorced mothers had functioning
support payment agreements with their children's
fathers.
The Japanese child support system
is deficient in several key areas: most crucially
there is no effective mechanism for enforcing
payments or collecting arrears. The courts
normally do not take action if a delinquent father
fails to meet his obligations. Basically, if a
father reneges on an agreement, most mothers can
do very little about it unless they are wealthy
enough to pursue the matter through Japan's
notoriously slow, time-consuming and expensive
legal system. Even then, if the mother wins, the
courts can only legally force a father to pay a
quarter of the originally agreed monthly child
support payments. Since payments are extremely low
compared to the cost of living, this also acts as
yet another disincentive for seeking legal
redress. The current system leaves mothers and
children at the mercy of fathers, who if they
decide not to pay, face no real penalties.
Kanami, a divorcee with three sons, told
Asia Times Online, "My husband left us to marry a
younger woman. He still lives nearby, but refuses
to pay any money for the boys. The local
authorities have asked him, but he refuses and
they say there is nothing they can do. It seems so
unfair that he can just abandon us like this and
get away with it."
To try to tackle cases
like this, the law was revised in April 2003 with
the supposed aim of making more divorced fathers
pay child support, but the half-hearted amendment
so far has had zero impact. In fact, the situation
has deteriorated, as the average monthly
maintenance payment five years ago was 53,200 yen
and in the new survey it is only 44,660 yen, a
decrease of 8,540 yen or 16%.
All past
attempts to effectively amend the law have been
derailed by a vocal group of conservative male
lawmakers who claim that making men liable to pay
for divorced children would go against so-called
"Japanese traditions".
High divorce
rates
The new survey shows that 80% of
women-headed households resulted from divorce. At
present about 978,500 households are fatherless
due to marital breakup, representing an increase
of 49.7% from the previous poll. It is estimated
that in 2003 there were about 1,225,400 families
with absent fathers in Japan.
Nationwide,
the number of such families in fiscal 2003
accounted for 2.7% of the country's 45.8 million
families. The number of unmarried mothers remained
relatively low, at about 70,500, up just 2% from
the previous survey. However, over the past decade
divorce rates have shot up, bringing current
Japanese divorce levels in line with European
Union averages. On the other hand, Japan lags
behind the United States, where rates are
exceptionally high by international standards. In
2004 there were about 267,000 divorces in Japan
compared to 283,854 in 2003. While the actual
numbers decreased, so did marriages, so not much
has changed, analysts said.
Jeff Kingston,
a professor at Temple University Japan and author
of Japan's Quiet Transformation, explained,
"The problem in Japan is the reality that higher
divorce rates lead to a higher incidence of
poverty, and that a lot of women are working;
these two facts have not yet caught up with social
policy." He added, "Policies have generally been
based on a false assumption of stable families
with one breadwinner."
Kingston also said,
"The problem is that the ideology of the strong,
stable, secure family with the husband who is the
breadwinner with a secure job does not match the
reality. Thus, the policies that are currently in
place are clearly inadequate."
Poor
children lose out to the elderly
By
European Union standards, Japan has very limited
social welfare provisions for poor families.
Critics argue that at present Japanese welfare
policy focuses far too much on the elderly at the
expense of other needy groups, such as children
living in poverty. Despite a sharp increase in the
number of children experiencing economic hardship,
social welfare policy continues to be almost
exclusively oriented towards the elderly. Many
political commentators say this is for electoral
reasons as the elderly are much more likely to
vote than younger groups.
In August 2002,
the government reduced welfare allowances for
needy children and has since initiated a series of
austerity measures. Machiko Osawa, a professor at
Japan Woman's University, commented, "Alarmingly,
they are now tightening the conditions for
receiving welfare, making them even stricter. I
think they make these assumptions in the belief
that the 'family' can take care of these social
needs."
Osawa said there is an imbalance
in the way the state distributes resources to
various needy groups. She explained, "If you look
at the way the social welfare budget is allocated,
and this is probably because of the aging society,
a huge proportion of the money is designated for
the elderly. The social security budget seems to
be driven by the needs of the elderly and there is
no innovation for the changing needs of society."
However, Yoshio Maya, a professor at Nihon
University Graduate School, who also advises the
Japanese government, rejected this argument as
well as comparisons between Japanese single
mothers and their EU counterparts. He said
Japanese welfare priorities are correct and that
it is right to focus on the elderly. He told Asia
Times Online, "In Japan it is easier for this
group of mothers to get a part-time job and the
level of remuneration they receive for such work
is not so bad. Therefore, the living standard of
single-mothers is not so poor and they can manage
on an adequate economic level. Also, the average
number of children these Japanese mothers have to
care for is comparatively low, usually one or two
children."
If current policy does not
change, the number of poor children living in
Japan looks almost certain to increase.
Furthermore, if traditional family support
networks continue to weaken and divorce rates
remain high, a great many more vulnerable families
will fall through the ever widening gaps in the
welfare safety net system, creating new tragedies.
About the survey
The Health,
Labor and Welfare Ministry interviewed 3,792
households randomly selected from those in the
2000 census. From this group it estimated that
there are now about 1,225,400 fatherless families
in Japan. The data was collected in November 2003
and released near the end of January this year.
Earlier national surveys on mother-headed
households put their numbers at 789,900 in 1993
and at 954,900 in 1998
In the survey, a
single-mother or lone-mother household was defined
as one where the father is absent and the
divorced, separated, widowed or unmarried mother
lives with a child, or children, under the age of
20.
J Sean Curtin is a GLOCOM
fellow at the Tokyo-based Japanese Institute of
Global Communications.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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