Jun 27 (Japan Today) - The poverty rate among Japanese children slightly improved in 2015 thanks in part to the country's better job market but one in every seven children remains poor, a survey by the welfare ministry showed Tuesday.
The national livelihood survey showed 13.9 percent of children under 18 in Japan were in households living on less than half the national median household disposal income, down 2.4 percentage points from the previous survey for 2012, when the rate was the worst on record, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said.
A ministry official attributed the first improvement in 12 years to "better job market conditions, which pushed up income of households raising children."
But the rate remains relatively high among industrialized countries and situations are particularly dire for single-parent households.
The relative poverty rate, the percentage of people in all generations living in households with an income below 50 percent of the national median level, fell 0.5 percentage point to 15.6 percent.
By household composition, the poverty rate among single-parent households was much higher at 50.8 percent, according to the extensive survey conducted every three years.
According to the latest data by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average child poverty rate among 36 countries including its members, stood at 13.3 percent and the average relative poverty rate was at 11.4 percent, both lower than those of Japan.
The rate of single-mother households in Japan with loans or without any savings increased from the previous survey in 2012 and 82.7 percent of them said their daily livelihood is "tough."
