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Women and Japan's New Poor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

J. Sean Curtin
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A Japanese government survey published in early 2005 estimates that the number of fatherless families has skyrocketed, hitting 1.22 million in fiscal 2003. This is the highest number ever recorded and represents a 28.3% increase from the previous survey conducted five years earlier (see note 1 for full survey details). The figures also show that the vast majority of children in these households live far below the poverty line, creating a rapidly expanding underclass of impoverished families.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 5 , May 2005 , e7
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

References

Notes

1. 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 1,225,400 fatherless families in Japan. The data was collected in November 2003 and released near the end of January 2005. 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.

2. This case study comes from a long-term, ongoing, research project that was initiated in 1992. It consists of interviews and life-histories of 14 lone-mothers located all over Hokkaido and is updated each year. The author used personal acquaintances and informants to be introduced to the lone-mothers who make up this long-term project. It is acknowledged that the relatively small sample size, confined to Hokkaido, limits the findings of this study. However, it is hoped that this small scale study, in conjunction with local and national data, will offer insight into the challenges facing poor lone-mothers in today's Japan.