Xia Zhihai “Poverty creeps upon Children”

 

Recently, I find the word “Children’s Poverty” on the headlines of newspapers or other medium very often. I didn’t understand first which country have such poverty, and it was incredible to know that it was in Japan. All the children in Japan have game machines and smartphones from schoolchildren time. I can’t believe also that their appearances are poor.

 

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japanese leading economic newspaper),

“Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions” (国民生活基礎調査) by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare shows that Japanese poverty rate rose to 16.3 percent, record high, in 2012. It is 0.6 points lower than the previous survey. I understood the figures shows clearly.

*poverty rate : a ratio of children under 18 years old who are living in the families

  which is under half of average income

As children do not work and have no income, above figures were calculated on the basis of incomes of their parents. As the reason for rising poverty rate, the survey points out that the number of farther-less families are increasing. As mothers are working as temporary employees (from agencies) or under irregular employment, we can say that it is natural that their incomes are low. If we judge the poverty of children by the family income, difference between families which have fathers who are lifetime employment or two-income families and farther-less families are big. Frankly speaking, I have been thinking that Japanese children are blessed as I told above and parents spend money with no stint to cramming schools and lessons. Apart from rising poverty rate, I began to be anxious about such income disparities. Disparities between the children who are blessed with good opportunities and who are not blessed may affect bad influence to the future of Japan.

 

Even if the income of their parents would have disparities, it will be all right as long as children can get equal opportunities for education without any disparities. It is natural for children to go to cramming schools in Japan. Is it difficult for the poor income families to let their children get good habits to learn because of their poor income?Why do Japanese children go to cramming school? First of all, it may be for their preparation for examinations. Next is a decline of educational power by school. According to the survey of OECD, incredible to say, expenditure for education by the government is the 31^st out of 32 countries. If education in Japan is not enough, children will continue to go to cramming schools for the time being. And if children in Japan are played by disparity of income of their parents, how will Japan be?

 

Prof. Jeffery Sachs, the chief of the Earth Institute of the Columbia University, has been regarding this (children’s poverty is greatly affected by poor surroundings of their parents ) as questionable from many aspects since before. He insists that we should get out of the chain which poverty in America infects through generations. According to his monograph, they are in the cycle that children whose parents are unemployed, sickened or incarcerated, regardless of being divorced or not, are living in poor regions and go to schools of low educational standards. And such children who are brought up under such circumstances have no choice but to grow up to poor man, in other words man of poor skill and cannot get respectable jobs. Such negative chain should be cut. He warns also that increasing of such poor children may affect economic growth of America.He emphasizes further that it happened in an “affluent society, America”.I do not think such negative chain is not possible in Japan.

 

How to check poverty of children and how to cut such negative chain before it comes too late? Prof. J. Sachs shows how to solve. He advises, according to his monograph published last year titled “children and country suffered from poverty”, that public money should be invested to give equal opportunity for education thoroughly.There is “Kodomo Teate Law*” in Japan. (*It gives legal guardians of children under 15 years old.) Is it functioning well?

I hope poverty rate in Japan would decline when I investigate next time.

 

(A full-time lecturer,Kyoai Gakuen University)

 

Translated by Kazuo Kawamura

English checked by Mac Maquito

 

SGRA Kawaraban 437 in Japanese (original)