Child Poverty Rates Across 47 Prefectures and Their Causes

: Focusing on Fukui Prefecture

Abstract

The poverty level varies from prefecture to prefecture, and progress has been made in analyzing the factors causing differentials in the severity of poverty. Therefore, I first analyzed the factors causing the differentials in child poverty rates from prefecture to prefecture using multiple regression analysis. The depend­ent variable was child poverty rates. The independent variables were minimum wage, take-up rate of public assistance, rate of temporary workers, rate of dual income households, rate of three-generation households, unemployment rate and female labor participation rate. The results of the analysis proved that factors influencing child poverty rates were, in descending order of influence, the unemployment rate, rate of three-generation households minimum wage, dual income rate, and rate of temporary workers. The factors having a positive influence on child poverty rates were unemployment rate, dual income rate, and rate of temporary workers. The factors having negative influence on child poverty rates were the rate of three-generation households and the minimum wage. Next, I examined independent variable data on Fukui Prefecture to explain why the prefecture has the lowest child poverty rate, and to better understand the impact of those variables.