Kids in Poverty

The Japanese love the words “developed country.” Most Japanese firmly believe that they are living in a developed country, in which life is easy in pursuit of happiness and free from poverty. However, a governmental research revealed one Japanese child out of six is in poverty, marking the worst level ever. One of the biggest reasons is the social system, in which the poor do not have an opportunity to be better.

According to the report of Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 16.3% of children of eighteen years old or younger were categorized in poverty, which meant their yearly family income was ¥1.22 million or less. That was the tenth in the worst among developed countries club, or Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It is an embarrassing result as a self-confident developed nation.

Reportage on Yomiuri Shimbun on Wednesday was heartbreaking. A twelve-year-old girl was waiting for her mother coming back home from work on Christmas Eve last year. Footsteps stopped in front of her room and she heard sound of closing a valve for water supply, because the family could not pay for public utility fee. When she and her mother went to a park to fill bottles with water, a neighbor cried “Don’t you take it.” She had a rice ball with a glass of water for the dinner.

The girl lives with only her mother, whose monthly income is a hundred thousand yen. The mother’s job is helping nursery for old people, but the job status is far from stability. Because the girl sometimes hurt herself with a fear of loneliness, her mother needed to be with her as long as possible. Due to insufficiency of food, the girl caught cold every month. “I always think I’m hopeless,” the girl accuses herself. This is a vicious cycle of Japanese poverty.

The government is making effort to make a guideline dealing with kids’ poverty. It will set a goal in twelve categories, including ratio of going to high school and getting stable job. Support for education, ordinary life, job for parents and family finance will be targets for policy relieves. Early education for free, cooperation between government and non-governmental organization and non-reimbursement scholarship are something in their minds.

But fundamental reason is built in social structure, which has been stemming from policies dividing the rich and poor. Neo-liberal economic policy taken by former Prime Minister, Jun-ichiro Koizumi, would be guilty for this situation of kids’ poverty. Those policies could be applied to a geographically broad country. But in a narrow country such as Japan, poverty cannot live in itself and even harms everyone, for example through crimes.