Japan Press Weekly

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2016 July 20 - 26 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

More middle-income families sink into poverty under Abe regime

Under the Abe government, many middle-income households have fallen into the low-income category. This is shown by the Comprehensive Survey of the Living Conditions released by the Welfare Ministry on July 12.

The survey shows that the percentage of households which earn between four million yen and five million yen a year decreased by 1.8 percentage points from 11.6% in 2012, when PM Abe returned to power, to 9.8% in 2015.

During the same period of time, the proportion of households whose annual incomes are between two million yen and three million yen increased by 1.6 percentage points from 12.4% to 14.0%. Also, the percentage of families with annual incomes between one million yen and two million yen rose from 13.0% to 13.6%.

PM Abe is boasting that thanks to his economic policy, the number of the employed has increased and that the job offers-to-seekers ratio has reached a “record high”. Actually, almost all of the increased job vacancies are low-paid part-time jobs.

In the same survey, the percentage of households which find it hard to make ends meet exceeded 60% in 2015 following the previous year.