A new sur­vey shows that Japan has one of the high­est rates of poverty amongst devel­oped nations. One of every six Japan­ese lives in poverty.

The Orga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nomic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment says that Japan’s poverty rate is the fourth high­est amongst devel­oped nations. Only the coun­tries of Mex­ico, Turkey, the United States and Lux­em­bourg were poorer.

From The Straits Times, we read more sta­tis­tics from Japan.

In Japan’s first offi­cial cal­cu­la­tion of its rel­a­tive poverty rate, the min­istry said 15.7 per cent of Japan­ese peo­ple lived on less than half the median dis­pos­able income in 2006.

The fig­ure, based on national sta­tis­tics of income in 2006, was up from a fig­ure of 14.6 per cent for 1997 accord­ing to the newly released min­istry data.

The ratio could be worse by now as Japan­ese work­ers’ salaries have fallen amid the eco­nomic slump fol­low­ing the 2008 global finan­cial crisis.

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