Aya Abe, Raising Awareness of Child Poverty in Japan

Dr. Aya Abe, a director at Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, discusses the issue of child poverty in Japan.

“Since the 1980s, Japan has become gradually unequal, but it’s an unseen problem. Japanese people tend to put up a facade of living in a middle class manner even when in debt…so the problem of poverty is more internalized. [Until recently] Japan did not even recognize that poverty was an issue.”