Catherwood LibraryILR School

Japan has the highest proportion of single working parents among the 35 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and it also has the highest poverty rate at 56 percent. In comparison, the U.S.’s poverty rate for single working parents is 33.5 percent. Working single parents in Japan have it tougher than in the U.S. as there is no joint custody in Japan; only 20 percent of men were providing child support in 2011. In a society that provides financial bonuses to husbands whose wives stay at home, along with a tax system that penalizes dual income families, 62 percent of working mothers leave the workforce to give birth and raise children. However, only 43 percent of women will find jobs if they return to the workforce – jobs that are part-time or in low-paying positions. The number of single mothers is growing due to increasing divorce rates; the divorce rate increased by 66 percent between 1980 and 2012, corresponding to a similar increase in the number of single mothers, which increased 72 percent between 1983 and 2011. Women increasingly seek divorce as they are less likely to tolerate cheating, abuse, and taking a back seat in their careers, but applying for jobs as a single mother is difficult as Japanese companies require that relatives be listed on resumes, and single mothers are seen as unreliable. While the government is trying to encourage women to enter the workforce and to increase marriage and childbirth rates in a country with low birth rates, it has provided little assistance to single mothers in the workforce. As requests for post-divorce financial assistance increased, major reforms in 2003 and again in 2006 cut back on benefits to single mothers.