I read a book "Tokyo Poor Women" in the past two days. After reading it, I was a little surprised. I didn't expect this to be the case.
In the past, I only understood that Japan is a low-desire society with a long-term economic downturn and few good job opportunities. However, the basic social security benefits are relatively complete, so it is basically possible to maintain a basic living standard.
But I didn’t expect that the gap between the rich and the poor is still quite large, and the involution of into is also quite serious.
Students from poor families, many of whose parents are self-employed, laid off and unemployed, are at the bottom of society, or have fallen from the middle class to the bottom. They often have bad tempers and bad behaviors, and have not created a warm and loving family for their children. The atmosphere and family relationships are generally tense, or they grew up in a divorced single-parent family.
html Over the past 20 years, the demand for Japanese companies to recruit high school graduates has been greatly reduced. Even poor families have to go to college or vocational schools. , while college tuition fees continue to rise. Since 1996, the tuition fee for national universities has increased from only 12,000 yen. When it reached the recent 550,000 yen, it has increased 44 times.The average household income has dropped from 6.64 million yen in 1994 to 5.6 million yen now.
In 2016, nearly 50% of college students used scholarships. The key is disguised interest-bearing loans, which undoubtedly burden college students with a lot of debt after graduation.
Therefore, many poor female college students have to earn money by becoming prostitutes to subsidize daily study and living expenses, or to repay student loans.
The book also introduces many other women with different life situations. But the previous case introductions undoubtedly had a great impact on me and gave me a lot of room for thinking.
also read a book before, "Sweeping Out: Poverty and Profits in American Cities", which describes and records the poor groups in American slums. Equally impressive.
Without further extension, I would like to talk about my thoughts on the domestic economy and society.
Since economic new normal was first proposed in 2014, it means that we are gradually entering a stage of economic downturn and low growth development.
Especially since the epidemic in 2019, economic growth has slowed down, job opportunities have decreased, companies have frequently laid off employees, and wage growth has slowed down.
I will tell you the result directly: more and more middle-class families are returning to poverty, and it is mainly concentrated among middle-aged parents in their 40s. Naturally, their children born after 10 years will face a gap in the quality of life, which will have a negative impact on their psychology and consumption. Habits and even worldviews and values ​​may have a great impact.
So, whether it is from teachers in education, or social enterprises institutions and people, I hope to pay greater attention to it.
