Investigation On Poverty Status And Causes Of Single Women Aged 30-49 In Japan

This study focuses on the unmarried Japanese single women aged 30-49,and analyzes the reasons why the women in this age group fall into poverty.Based on modern family theory,individualization theory and social exclusion theory,and using the official data of the Japanese government,this paper discusses the reasons why Japanese single women fall into poverty from three aspects: family,employment and social security.In recent years,poverty has become one of the hot issues in Japanese society.According to the basic survey of national life of the Ministry of health,health and labor in 2019,the relative poverty rate in Japan reached 15.7% in 2018,and about one in six people was in poverty.Moreover,according to the statistical analysis of Abe(2014),the poverty rate of Japanese women is higher than that of men in almost all age groups.The poverty gap between men and women is not a unique social problem in Japan.As early as 1995,the United Nations put forward the fact that poverty has obvious gender differences in the human development report.For example,women account for 70% of the 1.3 billion poor people in the world.Meanwhile,according to the data of the Ministry of health,labor and welfare,the average first marriage age of Japanese women in 2021 was 28.6 years old,and the lifetime unmarried rate of women reached 16.4%.Coupled with reasons such as divorce and husband loss,the single rate of Japanese women is higher.From the perspective of gender differences,this paper combs out the following three poverty characteristics of Japanese single women.The first is the concealment of poverty,that is,the poverty of single women is hidden under the modern family framework and is not easy to be detected.The second is the chain of poverty,that is,poverty has obvious characteristics of intergenerational inheritance,especially the chain of poverty in mother and child families.The third is the phenomenon of the working poor,that is,no matter how hard you work,you will fall into a state of "busy and poor"To sum up,this paper obtains three main conclusions after investigation and analysis.First,the structure and function of the family have changed.In the current post-war family system,single women can no longer be fully guaranteed.Second,most single women are engaged in informal employment with low income and low security.Lack of sufficient and stable income can easily lead to poverty.Third,with the continuous development of individualization in Japanese society and the emergence of a large number of single women,the social security system does not adapt well to its development.