Nearly one in every six Japanese lives in poverty, one of the highest rates among developed countries, the latest survey by Japan’s welfare ministry found.
In Japan’s first official calculation of its relative poverty rate, the ministry said 15.7 percent of people lived on less than half the median disposable income in 2006.
The figure, based on national income statistics from 2006, was up from a figure of 14.6 percent for 1997, the data showed.
Japan is confirmed to be “among the worst” of the the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) member countries, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Akira Nagatsuma said on Tuesday.
“I want to implement policies to improve the figure, with child-raising allowances and other measures,” Nagatsuma said.
The ratio could be worse by now as workers’ salaries have fallen amid the economic slump following the global financial crisis.
The new government has promised family-friendly policies, including a monthly allowance to households with young children.
An OECD report showed that Japan had the fourth-highest relative poverty rate among 30 member countries in the mid-2000s.
Japan’s rate came to 14.9 percent in 2004, behind worst-ranked Mexico with 18.4 percent, Turkey with 17.5 percent and the US with 17.1 percent.
The OECD report also showed the poverty rate for working single-parent households was very high in Japan, reaching 58 percent, far above second-worst Luxembourg with 38 percent.
Nagatsuma has said he plans to reinstate an extra allowance to financially strapped single-parent households, possibly in December.
The allowance was gradually reduced from 2005 and completely scrapped earlier this year under the previous governments’ policy of putting more emphasis on job training to help single parents earn money by themselves.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion