A Japanese government survey published in early 2005 estimates that the number of fatherless families has skyrocketed, hitting 1.22 million in fiscal 2003. This is the highest number ever recorded and represents a 28.3% increase from the previous survey conducted five years earlier (see note 1 for full survey details). The figures also show that the vast majority of children in these households live far below the poverty line, creating a rapidly expanding underclass of impoverished families.

 

The new Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry data highlight the failure of government policy to address the important social changes that have occurred over the past decade, particularly the steep rise in divorces, many involving children. Although the divorce rate has recently declined slightly reaching peak levels in 2002, numbers remain extremely high for Japan.

 

1. Number of Divorces and

Divorce Rate 1990-2004

Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2005

 

Over the past decade, low wages for women, a non-functional child support payment system, an inadequate social welfare policy, and a weakening of traditional family support networks all have contributed to redrawing the Japanese poverty map. Previously, elderly households constituted the bulk of the poor, but today the balance has firmly shifted to mother-headed families.

 

Most lone mothers and their children now live in poverty, with many experiencing real hardship. In 2001, the average annual income of a lone-mother family was about 2.52 million yen (US$23,850). The latest data estimate that this fell to just 2.12 million yen in fiscal 2002, far below median figure. In 2000, the average household income was about 6.17 million yen, and for an elderly household the figure was 3.19 million yen.

 

Some low-income families are experiencing such extreme poverty that there have even been a few rare cases of mothers and children dying from malnutrition. One recent case was reported at the beginning of February 2005 when a 27-year-old mother and her three-year-old son were found starved to death in their apartment in Saitama Prefecture near Tokyo. Police reported that there was no food in the apartment and the woman only had eight yen ($0.07) in her purse.

 

An unmarried mother living on a very low income in snowy northern Japan commented: “It is hardest to manage in winter because of heating costs, especially this year. I try to stay at work for as long as possible because it’s warm there and my son is in a well-heated day care center. For mothers like me day care is free, so it is best he is there for as long as possible. At home, we stay in one room and wear blankets to keep warm.” She added, “Ever since I read about the mother whose baby froze to death because she could not pay for electricity, I feel so worried.”

 

International research has shown that in developed countries the three primary causes of single-mother poverty are low wages, non-payment of child support money by absent fathers, and inadequate social provisions, such as welfare programs, tax credits for poor families, free child care for poor mothers or other systems in which the state transfers resources to them. By Western European, but not American, standards, Japan is seriously deficient in all three categories, creating an environment in which poverty is now keenly felt, and in which poverty levels are almost certain to increase.

 

The latest government sponsored survey calculates that 83% of lone mothers are working, compared with an average of about 86% for the previous decade. The employment rates of Japanese lone mothers are the highest in the industrialized world, although in recent years they have decreased slightly due to the long recession and tight job market. While labor force participation rates stay high, average wage levels have remained extremely low. This is because Japan has a widening gender-based wage gap, and in recent years there has been a proliferation of low-paid non-standard forms of employment, the kind of work in which many lone mothers are engaged. According to the latest Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry employment survey, which is conducted every four years, in 2003, part-time and temporary workers comprised 34.6 percent of Japan’s workforce, up 7.1 percentage points from 1999.

 

Flawed Child support system

 

Non-payment of child support by absent fathers is one of the main causes of poverty for families headed by women, especially in Japan. According to the latest government survey, only 34% of divorced mothers had functioning support payment agreements with their children’s fathers.

 

The Japanese child support system is deficient in several key areas: most crucially there is no effective mechanism for enforcing payments or collecting arrears.

 

The courts normally do not take action if a delinquent father fails to meet his obligations. Basically, if a father reneges on an agreement, most mothers can do very little about it unless they are wealthy enough to pursue the matter through Japan’s notoriously slow, time-consuming and expensive legal system. Even then, if the mother wins, the courts can only legally force a father to pay a quarter of the originally agreed monthly child support payments. Since payments are extremely low compared to the cost of living, this acts as yet another disincentive for seeking legal redress. The current system leaves mothers and children at the mercy of fathers, who face no real penalties for nonpayment.

 

To try to tackle the problem, the law was revised in April 2003 with the supposed aim of requiring divorced fathers to pay child support, but the half-hearted amendment has had zero impact. In fact, the situation has deteriorated, as the average monthly maintenance payment five years ago was 53,200 yen and in the new survey it is only 44,660 yen, a decrease of 8,540 yen or 16%.

 

All past attempts to effectively amend the law have been derailed by a vocal group of conservative male lawmakers who claim that making men liable to pay for divorced children would go against so-called “Japanese traditions”.

 

High divorce rates

 

The latest survey shows that 80% of female-headed households resulted from divorce. At present about 978,500 households are fatherless due to marital breakup, representing an increase of 49.7% from the previous four-yearly study. There are even more mother-headed families than these figures indicate as some of families live with relatives and are included in their households. In 2003, a government agency estimated that there were about 1,225,400 families with absent fathers in Japan.

 

Nationwide, the number of such families in fiscal 2003 accounted for 2.7% of the country’s 45.8 million families. The number of unmarried mothers remained relatively low, at about 70,500, up 2% from the previous survey. However, over the past decade divorce rates have shot up, bringing current Japanese divorce levels in line with European Union averages, although lagging behind U.S. levels. In 2004 there were about 267,000 divorces in Japan compared to 283,854 in 2003. While the actual numbers decreased, so did marriages, so not much has changed.

 

2. International Comparison of Divorce

Rates Per Thousand of Population