2 日本における子育て世帯の貧困・相対的剥奪と社会政策(I 共通課題=子育てをめぐる社会政策)

抄録

This article describes child poverty and deprivation in Japan. While it has been reported elsewhere that the economic well-being of children in Japan has declined since the 1980s, this article is one of the first to go into the details of child poverty using concepts of both traditional income-based poverty measures as well as relative deprivation measures that are constructed from 15 items deemed necessary in a child's life. The analysis confirms that the children in single-mother households, households with more than four children, and households with a young parent or young parents have a higher probability of being low-income. Contrary to popular belief, the ages of children did not yield significant differences in terms of poverty rates. The use of relative deprivation to conduct analysis has several advantages compared to the income-based poverty approach. First of all, by measuring the living standards of children directly, it bypasses the problem of difference in "needs" between different households. The equivalization of income takes into account the size of households, but it (usually) does not take into account, say, the difference in consumption needs for a 2-year-old versus an 18-year-old. Second, the income measure assumes that all members of a household have the same level of living standard, but the deprivation measure does not. By setting different items to be counted into the deprivation scale for children and adults, it can measure living standards of children and adults separately. In cases of resource shortage, it is probable that parents maintain the living standards of children while lowering their own living standards. Using deprivation measurements, we can observe such behavior. Third, by using deprivation measurements, we can set up separate poverty thresholds for adults and children. The results of the deprivation analysis of children show trends similar to those of income-based poverty analyses. The children in single-mother households and/or with young parent(s) have, on the average, higher deprivation scores than other children. The "threshold" income below which the deprivation score rises quickly can also be observed at 4 to 5 million yen (household annual income). Lastly, the deprivation of single mothers is even worse than the deprivation of children in single-mother households, indicating that mothers do away with their own necessities while maintaining the living standards of children.