Japan Press Weekly

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2017 June 7 - 13 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Unusually high university tuitions eat up household savings

Many households with a university student use up much of their savings in order to pay unusually high tuitions, Akahata on June 8 reported based on government statistics.

The Internal Affairs Ministry surveys the average household savings rate once every five years. The saving rate is the ratio of a household’s net increase/decrease in savings, the amount of money that the household saved minus the amount of money that it withdrew, to its disposable income.

In 2014, among working households with two children, the rate stood at minus 6.3% for households where an elder child goes to university, vocational school, college, or graduate school. This means that these families need to withdraw their savings because they are unable to cover their expenditures with their incomes.

In contrast, among two-child families, the saving rate is around 10% if the elder child is 18 years old or younger.

These results suggest that the level of parents’ income and savings determines their child’s access to higher education. This situation goes against the principle of Article 26 of the Constitution which guarantees the right to education. The need now is to drastically lower university tuitions.