“I feel deprived of my dignity because I am a single mother, I receive public assistance, I don’t have enough money for daily food and school, and I don’t have work. » At 45, Mika, who only gives her first name like all of our interlocutors, has been raising her two children aged 3 and 7 as best she can since her divorce. “for domestic violence”. “My ex-husband had been fired, she explains. I was mentally exhausted. » Suffering from a long Covid-19 and a chronic illness, living in a small apartment in a modest district of Tokyo, she is struggling to find a job. “My children would like to join clubs and travel, but I can’t afford it. » The allowances amount to 2 million yen (13,400 euros) per year. His modest parents cannot help him.
At the heart of the world’s third largest economy, his case is not isolated. The average annual income of households with a single mother was 3.73 million yen in 2020, less than half that of households with children and far from the 6.06 million yen that single-parent families with the father receive.
“Compared to European countries, many Japanese single mothers live in poverty, even if they work. 85% of single-parent households have a job, but 48.3% of them are in a situation of poverty”, explains Yanfei Zhou of the Women’s University of Japan. In France, their poverty rate, defined as resources below half the median income, is 24.1%, according to the OECD.
Government envelope
Today, Japan has 1.4 million single-parent households, 90% of which are with the mother. Single mothers are part of these “new poor”: those who go unnoticed, who are not noticed and whom society tends to forget.
Their precariousness has sometimes turned to destitution during the coronavirus pandemic with its procession of job cuts in catering or other services, followed by high inflation. What justify the announcement, Thursday 1er June, by the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, of an envelope of 3,500 billion yen over three years, for the protection of children, a vast program encompassing support for education, the prevention of abuse, the fight against against the declining birth rate and the reduction of poverty. The announcement of the envelope follows the creation, the 1er April, from a family and children’s agency which, Mr. Kishida hopes, “will lead to the creation of a child-friendly society”.
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