Japan unveils plans for fund to tackle child poverty

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled plans to set up a fund to help alleviate child poverty Thursday, in a country where one in six children is classed as poor. The move follows a law passed by parliament last year aimed at tackling an issue that critics say has long been swept under the carpet in the world's third-largest economy. "We need to support the independence of financially-constrained single parent families or families with many children," Abe told a meeting of politicians, business leaders and non-profit groups. "I want to form a system in which the entire society helps children grow up," the prime minister said. A memorandum adopted at the meeting called for the formation of a privately-financed fund to help groups providing education and other services for children facing poverty, news reports said. The document did not specify how much money would be placed in the fund, but Abe pledged to secure revenues for the programme by December, the reports said. "The fact that the government recognises child poverty as a national issue is a big step," Aya Abe, a professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University who has been researching child poverty in Japan, told AFP. "But the government should also make a financial commitment or set a goal of how much they want to reduce the poverty rate." In 2012, a record high 16.3 percent of children aged 17 or under were living in poverty -- defined as surviving on funds half that of the average disposable income. That compares with 9.8 percent in Britain and 21.2 percent in the United States, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of rich countries. The poverty rate jumps to 54.6 percent for children living in single-parent households in Japan, the worst in the OECD. - Cash allowances - Experts say the cash allowances currently given to low-income single-parent households of up to 40,000 yen ($330) a month for the first child -- topping up a single mother's earned annual income of just 1.81 million yen -- are too small. The moves by the government "cannot be called big progress" because it is not promising any financial contribution to the proposed fund, said Koji Ogawa, a former spokesman for Ashinaga, a non-profit group that provides grants to children who have lost one or both parents. But, he said, "a national campaign could be meaningful" because it might improve the discrimination and prejudice against people in poverty. Single parents face strong social stigma in conservative Japan. Most recently, the mother of a 13-year-old schoolboy who was murdered in February, probably by a gang of youths, publicly blamed herself for his death, saying he would not have died if she had kept an eye on him. She said she had not known what her son was doing because she was working day and night to raise her five children alone. University student Ryohei Takahashi, who grew up in a single-parent household, welcomed the idea of a private fund to reduce child poverty. Takahashi's father committed suicide when he was 13 and, since then, his mother has had to provide for the family. "I consider myself lucky," said Takahashi, now 22. His mother did not have money for tuition but he won a scholarship and lives in an Ashinaga-funded dorm that serves breakfast and dinner. Not many single-parent families can afford expensive university fees, he said. Even if children manage to get into university, some still have to juggle part-time jobs to send money to their families. "I want companies to make an investment (in helping under-privileged children) because we'll definitely contribute to society in the future," he added.