Poverty in Japan: Nagaoka, Niigata

From the Niigata Nippo, the newspaper of record in the prefecture: The Board of Education in Niigata's second-largest city, Nagaoka (pop. 256,000, households 110,460), has conducted a survey of households with at least one child under the age of 18, of which there are 4,000 in the city (You read that right: fewer than 4% with children). Questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 2964. The results? 11% of kids are growing up in poverty (defined as a household of 2 on an income of less than 2 million yen a year, currently $13,828 USD), 11.2 % report a child mising school to take care of the family, with 4.5 reporting that the child (aged 12-17) takes care of family members. This is probably not your image of Japan.