Standard of Living in Japan - Growing Inequality

Growing Inequality

Over the past two decades or so, inequality in Japan has grown as a result of economic difficulties that Japan has faced since the end of the economic boom of the Eighties. This problem has been characterised by a rise in the percentage of the workforce employed on a temporary or part-time basis, from 19% in 1996 to 34.5% in 2009, together with an increase in the number of Japanese living in poverty. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the percentage of people in Japan living in relative poverty (defined as an income that is less than 50% of the median) rose from 12% of the total population in the mid-Eighties to 15.3% in 2000. In 2005, it was estimated that 12.2% of children in Japan lived in poverty. From 1985 to 2008, the percentage of non-regular workers (those working on fixed-term contracts without job security, seniority wage increases, or other benefits) rose from 16.4% to 34.1% of the workforce. Various observers have come to describe Japan as a “disparity society,” a socially divided society with stark class differences and inequalities (in a country where around 90% of the population have regarded themselves to be middle-class in various surveys). The rise in income inequality in Japan arguably contributed to the election of the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009, which promised to reduce socio-economic inequalities through policies such as an expanded welfare system. Despite these problems, the average standard of living in Japan remains amongst the highest in the world.