Dear SSJ-Forum,

The Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) at Temple University,
Japan Campus cordially invites you to the following evening lecture on
Wednesday, November 27, 2019. All ICAS events are held in English, open to
the public, and admission is free unless otherwise noted.

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- ICAS Event -
"Invisible" Child Poverty in Japan
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Wednesday, November 27, 2019
7:00 - 8:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Temple University, Japan Campus, Azabu Hall, 1F Parliament
Speaker:Aya Abe, Professor, Social Policy, Tokyo Metropolitan University
Registration:icas@tuj.temple.edu
* Registration is encouraged, but not required.

Overview:

Child poverty is a serious social problem in many developed nations, including
Japan. Contrary to common perception, Japan's child poverty rate is not low. It is
13.9% (2015 value, OECD Stat), indicating one out of seven children in Japan lives
in poor households. This rate is higher than the U.K.(11.2%), Germany (11.2%),
France (11.3%) and most of European countries, even though it is lower than Korea
(16%), Canada (17.1%) and the U.S. (20.2%). However, for a long time since the 1960s,
Japanese government and the society in general was not aware of this problem and it
is only after 2009 that "child poverty" became a recognized social issue. In 2013,
the Law to Promote Measures against Child Poverty, the first law in Japan which has
directly addressed child poverty.

The reason that Japanese society and the government was not aware of this social
issue for decades not that there was not child poverty in Japan. In 1985, the child
poverty rate was already higher than 10%. The problem was that, unlike in many
countries, Japanese child poverty did not manifest visibly, such as in rising
adolescent crime rate and undesirable behaviors. For this reason, Japan's poverty is
sometimes called "invisible poverty".

Recently, the effects of this "invisible poverty" on children have increasingly
become apparent with the use of social surveys. The talk will illustrate just how
bad are child poverty problem in Japan and how it is affecting children, using
recently conducted social surveys on children in Tokyo.


Speaker:

Aya Abe holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts
University. After working at a field office of the United Nations in India and a
Japanese aid agency, she has turned her attention to domestic social policy in Japan
and took a position in the National Institute of Population and Social Security
Research in 1999, which is a research arm of the Ministry of Health, Labour and
Welfare. She has participated and led many research projects on poverty and
inequality in Japan and has published numerous books and articles on poverty issues
in Japan. Her 2008 book entitled Child Poverty : Re-examining Japan's Inequality is
widely acclaimed to be the first book in Japan which focuses on child poverty in the
country. She serves on numerous committees of national and local government on
poverty and social assistance issues. In 2015, she left her previous position to
take up a professorship at the Tokyo Metropolitan University. In the same year, she
established the Center for Research on Child and Adolescent Poverty at the
University.