06 Stop the Reproduction of Poverty

“People on public assistance are all useless losers who waste money on gambling. So you should not depend on such a system and work hard.” These are the words my friend’s parent said to me when I was a third-grade junior high school student. I was a child of a single-parent household. When I was a junior high school student, I even spent some time living by myself without my parents at home. I often looked for coins behind the washing machines to buy some potato chips to stave off hunger. The electricity and gas supply often stopped, and it was not unusual for strangers to come by my house to collect debts, asking me when my parents would come home.

Being a migrant and a woman, my mother worked hard as a doubly-marginalized worker in Japanese society. Stressed out, she once said to me, “I wish I never gave birth to you.” Her words still lie heavily in my heart.

▶ Poverty and social exclusion caused by the flexibilization of the labor market

It is now a popular topic of discussion in the media that one in seven children in Japan are living in poverty. Behind this reality, are reasons such as parents suffering from unstable work, low pay, and unemployment. Such unstable working conditions are influenced by the increasing flexibilization of the labor market since the end of the 20th century. The ratio of irregular workers has risen to 37% of the labor force, which is two times higher than that in 1990.

The large inequalities across employment types and gender in the Japanese labor market keep the wages of female irregular workers very low. This structure fosters poverty among single-mother households in which women are the breadwinners. Migrant single-mother households are further vulnerable in this structure. Many of those migrant single mothers are victims of domestic violence, and are in need of enough time and a safe space to recover. However, they also need to maintain their livelihood by themselves – but doing so on low-paid irregular work is very difficult. Thus, 53% of households on welfare whose heads are Filipino are single-mother households, as of 2019. Furthermore, not limited to single mothers, for migrants, who in many cases engage in irregular labor, unemployment immediately leads to poverty. Such unstable employment conditions migrants experience may influence their children’s education and growth, and could reproduce poverty.

Seikatsu hogo (public livelihood assistance) is a system to address these problems of poverty. However, there are actually many obstacles, such as (1) stigma attached to recipients, as shown in the episode at the beginning of this proposal (chapter); (2) “Mizugiwa sakusen” – a practice by municipal offices to discourage applicants; (3) the requirement that college-bound children in welfare-receiving households must forfeit their “dependent” status and become “independent”; and adding to this, foreign nationals further face (4) the fact that livelihood assistance is not considered to be a right, but a privilege applied mutatis mutandis; (5) limitations in the application/ eligibility of livelihood assistance depending on one’s residence status; and (6) the requirement of financial independence for residence status change and renewal applications. These obstacles discourage people in poverty to apply for livelihood assistance, leading to social exclusion.

▶ The establishment of a support system that makes people feel like they do not have to deal with their problems all by themselves

What can we do to stop the reproduction of poverty? First, there is a need to strengthen the social security systems. This includes: (1) establish a mandate for public offices to disseminate information about the social welfare system; (2) establish a mandate for the government to educate people to counter prejudices toward recipients of social welfare; (3) demand relevant offices to accept oral applications for social welfare; (4) provide proactive (preventative) public support for those who have yet to become eligible for social welfare, but are nevertheless experiencing livelihood difficulties; and (5) revise the extant law towards the Livelihood Security Law (“Proposal of Revisions to the Public Livelihood Assistance Law” by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, 2019).

Second, there is a need to comprehensively address problems faced by workers. For example, “flexible” irregular workers are excluded from corporate welfare and social security systems, and face various risks such as low pay, overwork, and unemployment. There is a need for (1) a significant increase in minimum wage; (2) expanded public support for people in diverse forms of employment, child-care, elderly-care, unemployment, and job-changing/-retirement with regard to income, employment, and education; and (3) an approach to ensure workers’ exercise of their rights.

Lastly, Japan needs to realize the principle of equal treatment of nationals and foreigners as stipulated in the International Covenants of Human Rights, which Japan ratified in 1979. It should eliminate the mutatis mutandis application of as well as the residence status limitations placed on the provision of social welfare to foreign nationals so that they can apply for social welfare regardless of nationality or residence status.

Social security is a system that exists to substantively ensure that an individual can live a life unconditionally as a human being. A person should feel assured that he/she does not need to deal with all of his/her own problems by him/herself. I sincerely hope for a society in which everyone can value oneself as well as others.

Illustration: 金明和