Trends in poverty among low-income workers in Japan since the nineties

After the rapid economic growth in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s, the energy policy in response to the two oil crises and technological innovation, Japan’s economy has grown to a scale that is sufficiently large to produce the world’s second largest GDP. Its residents’ living standard is very high compared with those of people who live in most other countries. Over the past decade or so, however, a number of factors, including the falling birthrate and population aging, growing market globalization, and the effects of the Heisei recession, have combined to wreak ongoing major changes in the economic and social environment of Japan, where it was once held that “everyone is middle class.” Since the mid-1990s, marked increases in the number of households receiving public assistance and households without savings have been confirmed, and many households, especially those on low incomes, are experiencing growing livelihood insecurity. This situation has prompted a strong interest in the subject of poverty in Japan. An overview of poverty in Japan from a historical perspective shows poverty in the past and poverty today to be extremely different in character. The most important difference is that poverty is today less serious than in the past, for, while long ago occasional famines could lead to starvation, there are now few people who live in such extreme poverty that they are almost starving to death. Nonetheless, people evaluate their lives by comparing with those of others, and, if they feel that their standard of living is much worse, they will consider themselves to be poor and many other people in the society, too, will reach a similar conclusion. As the severity of poverty needs to be evaluated in comparison to others, research into poverty is a worthwhile pursuit in any age.