A June survey by Save the Children Japan of 8,736 households nationwide who applied for food assistance (94.5% single-parent households) found that daily food spending per person has fallen to ¥490 for two-person households and ¥361 for six-person households. The two-person figure is down further from ¥533 last year, and 85.5% of households said they went without food they needed at some point in the past year. On 5ch, opinions split between those blaming high prices and policy failures, and those pointing to individual factors like working hours and household budgeting — with several posters running their own calculations of take-home pay.
A survey by the international NGO Save the Children Japan (Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo) revealed by the 19th that the average daily food budget per person among financially struggling households that applied for food assistance has fallen below ¥500. The survey also highlighted how rising prices are keeping households from buying enough food.
The survey was conducted in June among 8,736 parents nationwide who had applied for the NGO’s assistance, with valid responses collected from all of them online or by phone. Single-parent households made up 94.5% of the total, and combining those “living on borrowed money” (26.2%) with those “drawing down savings” (36.9%), households running a deficit topped 60%.
Amid continued price increases, the average daily food budget per person was highest among two-person households, which fell from ¥533 in a similar survey last year to ¥490. Six-person households saw the figure drop to ¥361. About 85.5% of respondents said that over the past year there had been times they couldn’t afford food their family needed.
Source: jiji.com / Original article here
There may be reasons for it, but personal responsibility seems like a big factor too
Seriously, I feel for the kids
Go easy on the ones who lost a spouse to death
They need to make child support payments legally enforceable
Guess Showa-era school lunches were actually nutritious, even luxurious meals
It IS technically a boom…
People are getting poorer despite the boom
Re: #40
So what are we supposed to do about it?
Wasn't it the public that rejected growth?
This country is finished
What are you even talking about?
It means they're cutting food costs because money's going elsewhere
Work 10 hours a day at minimum wage and that's about ¥12,000/day
Work every single day with no days off and that's ¥360,000, take-home around ¥280,000
Even with ¥100,000 rent, that's plenty left over
If you've done all that and it's still not enough, then you can say you have no money
There's no way a single parent with kids can work 10 hours a day
After dropping the kids off at daycare/school, a standard full-time schedule is 8 hours, 9-to-5
If it's hourly part-time work instead of a regular job, an unpaid 1-hour lunch break means only 7 paid hours — ¥8,400/day × 20 days
After taxes and social insurance, take-home is about ¥140,000
Plus child allowance, which pays ¥10,000-30,000 per month per child depending on the child's age and birth order
But people at the bottom could get better off just by working more hours
The people at my company eat out or hit a convenience store for lunch as a matter of course
That easily runs over ¥1,000 a pop
What are you even eating for ¥500?
They don't even have a company cafeteria lol
Anyone who normally spends over ¥1,000 a meal at a convenience store sounds like they must be seriously overweight
Cook your own rice and it's about ¥40 a serving
Get that down and the rest depends on your side dishes
For lunch, a frozen bento assortment keeps costs pretty low
Just stock up on half-price days
Except apparently they're actually overweight lol
you probably can't afford vegetables and the like
Bean sprouts run about ¥28
Lately it's common to grow lettuce-type greens hydroponically as a home garden
You can actually get a decent yield out of that
Background and talking points
It’s worth noting this survey covers only households that applied for food assistance, so it doesn’t reflect the food budget of an average family. The sample is also skewed, with 94.5% of respondents being single-parent households, so the numbers don’t directly represent “poverty across Japan” as a whole. In the thread, opinions split between those blaming high prices and policy failures, and those pointing to individual factors like working hours and household budgeting. Against calculations claiming that full-time work would bring in enough take-home pay, some pushed back that there’s a realistic ceiling on how many hours a parent can work while also raising kids — a point often overlooked in discussions of poverty. The survey also included a year-over-year comparison — the two-person household figure falling from ¥533 to ¥490 — showing this is a trend that has worsened over time, not just a single year’s snapshot, though that’s easy to miss from the article text alone.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Struggling Households] Food Budget Falls Below ¥500 a Day — NGO Survey Points to Strong Impact of Rising Prices.”
