The Recession and the Policy Response for Child Poverty in Japan
The purpose of this chapter is to describe how the economic crisis affected children and how the government of Japan responded to mitigate the impact on children. The economic crisis worsened child poverty not by increasing worklessness, but rather by decreasing income of those who had poor-quality jobs. However, the crisis brought about an abrupt change in the government. Even though it was short-lived, the new government put in place some measures to mitigate the impact of the crisis and it seems to have had some success in doing so. There was an improvement in child poverty rate as well as in child deprivation. In a way, Japan presents a unique case study in that the economic crisis did trigger some positive changes in the protection of child well-being.