Japan Press Weekly

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2020 December 2 - 8 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

40% of Fukushima evacuees live on less than 3 million yen a year

Forty percent of people evacuated from the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant live on less than three million yen a year. This was shown in the survey results which a university-based institute has recently released.

The Kansei Gakuin University Institute of Disaster Area Revitalization, Regrowth and Governance conducted a questionnaire survey to find out the current situation of Fukushima evacuees with the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns approaching. The institute, between July and September, carried out the survey of about 5,000 evacuees with help from their supporters’ groups. Many of them used to live in Fukushima Prefecture and some were evacuated from neighbouring prefectures.

Regarding current household income, the percentage of respondents who said that their annual income is less than three million yen stood at 39.1%. Of them, 16% said that their family income is around the two-million-yen level with 13% at the one-million-yen level. Some answered that they live on less than one million yen a year and others said they have no income.

This survey also asked a question about the family income before evacuation, Among the respondents, 11.1% said their annual income was in the two- to three-million-yen range and 7.6% at the one-million-yen level. This shows an increase in the number of evacuees who suffered income losses during extended periods of sheltering.

Regarding a question about their current occupation, 27.9% of the respondents said they are unemployed and 21.9% said they work non-regular jobs, including part-time jobs. These percentages are higher than those given to a question about evacuees’ jobs before the nuclear meltdown accident.

In the survey, many evacuees answered that they did not register their current residential address with the local municipal office as their fixed address. Of the respondents, 30.4% said that they have a “strong attachment” to their hometowns. On the other hand, 65.3% of the respondents evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture expressed unwillingness to return to the prefecture mainly for fear of radiation contamination.