Tuesday 23 March 2021
12:00pm – 1:00pm

Poverty in the UK and Japan

This event will start at 12pm GMT

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

Fully booked

The “invisibility” of poverty in Japanese society has long been one of the reasons for the underestimation of this social issue by the authorities. Walking down a street in Tokyo, it is rare to see any signs of poverty. Graffiti and run-down buildings are almost non-existent, and the crime rate is very low. Nevertheless, data from the OECD reveals that the poverty rate in Japan (15.7% in 2018) is actually higher than that in the UK (11.7%). Moreover, the impact of COVID-19 seems to be exacerbating social divisions and inequality, revealing the true scale of the problem. Research methods developed in the UK are helping finally to uncover Japan’s ‘hidden’ poverty, and policies are, slowly, starting to be implemented.

In this talk, Dr Aya Abe described how Japan “discovered” the problem of child poverty and how social science informed policymakers. Then, Dr David Gordon discussed the UK’s experience of child poverty, its anti-poverty policies, and some of the lessons that have been learned from poverty research.

Professor Abe's Presentation Professor Gordon's Slides

A short summary of the event can be accessed via the link below, located on the Foundation’s Facebook page:

Event Summary

A video of the event can be viewed below:

About the contributors

Professor David Gordon

Professor David Gordon is the Director of the Bristol Poverty Institute and the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol. The Townsend Centre is dedicated to multi-disciplinary research on poverty in both the industrialised and developing world. The Centre was established by the University of Bristol in response to the United Nations First International Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006) and in recognition of the work of Professor Peter Townsend. Professor Gordon has published widely on social and distributional justice, social harm, the scientific measurement of poverty, child poverty and human rights, childhood disability, crime and poverty, area-based anti-poverty measures, the causal effects of poverty on ill health, and rural poverty.

Professor Aya Abe

Professor Aya Abe is the Director of The Research Centre for Child and Adolescent Poverty at Tokyo Metropolitan University. She received a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a B.S. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After a 16-year career at the National Institute of Population & Social Security Research, a governmental research institute, she moved to teach public policy at Tokyo Metropolitan University. Her 2008 book entitled Child Poverty: Re-examining Japan’s Inequality was widely acclaimed as the first book in Japan which focuses on child poverty in the country. In 2015, she established the Centre for Research on Child and Adolescent Poverty at the university, which is the first research centre in Japan dedicated to poverty research.