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"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the E
by GreaterFool 10y ago
"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the European Union.
The income gap in Japan was found to be 60.21 percent, meaning the household income of the nation’s most underprivileged families with children was less than 40 percent of the average."
I'm not sure how to read this. Income gap be damned, what is the minimum livable income? There's a difference between being poor relative to one's peers and being too poor to afford housing / food / education.
I live in Tokyo at the moment. My experience (as a single person without kids) is that if one wanted to live frugal but happy-go-lucky life it could be done quite cheaply.
"The income of the poorest fell from about ¥902,500 to ¥840,000 during the same period, according to data compiled by Abe of Tokyo Metropolitan University"
So there are some numbers, but what is the cost of living and where? Moving from Tokyo to Osaka would probably cut my living expenses by 50% or more. What about living in a smaller Japanese town?
The cost of living disparity between major urban areas and rest of Japan is probably gigantic.
- mkagenius 10y ago> ¥840,000 That's INR 8,597,047 in India. I think only top execs at a well established company make that much in India. Amazing.
- wineisamazing 10y agoYou mean 502,323 INR (as of now, using xe.com/ucc). Once you start factoring in living expenses (depending on location of course) the amount will seem really low.
- Pitarou 10y agoSee what ¥840,000 will buy you in Japan. :-)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cbowal 10y agoYou're off by a factor. ¥840,000 = INR 500,000
- gikochi 10y agoYour calculation is a bit off, it's around INR500,000(USD $7500)/year. No doubt it's still a lot of money for a lot of people in India, but after adjusted for prices, it's really very little. Even cheap takeaway food would cost at least ¥300 ish.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vemy 10y agoThat value is in Japanese Yen (JPY), not Chinese Yuan (CNY).
- mkagenius 10y agoSorry, lazily I just copy pasted into google, and didn't check the currency google understood it to be.
- vintermann 10y agoBeing poor relative to your peers sounds benign, but it's not a great feeling when you are much worse off than your parents were at the same age, and you realize that your kids will likely be worse off still. There's a reason this study focused on households with kids. As a single person without kids asking what's the minimal liveable income is, is not the heartbreaking question it is when you have kids. Moving is also a different beast if you have kids. (If you're divorced and have kids, God help you.)
- mikekchar 10y ago¥900,000 is almost exactly what I spent on average over a 5 year period from 2007-2012 living in rural Japan (Shizuoka prefecture). A couple of caveats: I was single at the time. I had subsidized housing (worth about ¥250,000 yen a year). I didn't have a car. That was the money I spent, and I made considerably more than that so was able to save quite a lot. However, I was very comfortable with that level of expenditure and I can't think of anything basic that I lacked. I think you would have to budget fairly tightly and it would be pretty easy to get into trouble. Especially in the north where you have to pay for heating it might be dicey. But it's not impossible to live relatively comfortably. I ate out a lot and drank expensive beer a lot. If I cooked more at home, ate more fish and drank shochu I could have saved more money. Getting rid of the TV (and thus the monthly NHK bill) would be fairly substantial. I have a lot of single friends in the area who make ~¥2,000,000 a year and they are absolutely fine on that salary. It's a different lifestyle from what people in the west are used to, but I wouldn't say they are less happy.
- adrianN 10y agoWhat job did you have during that time? Living in rural Japan sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
- S4M 10y agoFrom what I know, you can get a job as an English teacher pretty much everywhere in Japan if English is your mother tongue (I haven't done myself that but my wife is Japanese so I spent some time reading how foreigners can work in Japan).
- mikekchar 10y agoI was teaching English at the time. I'm currently in the same area programming on contract. It is quite wonderful. To be honest I'm hoping to expand and hire people, but haven't got everything sorted out yet. It occurred to me that it might be possible to find good people who want to live in rural Japan :-). Probably won't get my act together for another year or so...