Tag - poverty

 
 

POVERTY

COMMENTARY / Japan
May 15, 2015
Schools can do little without addressing poverty
Household income inequality has a bigger impact on students' academic performance than the quality of schools.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
May 14, 2015
Japan's low-earning adults find it hard to leave home, marry
Freelance writer Kenji Ayase was 25 when he moved back in with his parents after finding he couldn't afford to live on his own. He tried, but found within a year that it just wasn't paying off.
EDITORIALS
May 12, 2015
Saving children from poverty
If Japan's child poverty problem is left unattended, the Abe administration could squander the nation's 'most important treasure.'
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
May 5, 2015
Slum in shadows of Seoul's glitzy Gangnam district will likely soon be demolished
Close by the luxury high-rises of Seoul's most expensive neighborhood, 80-year-old Kim Ok-nyo burns charcoal to heat her two-room shack in Guryong, a shantytown of 2,000 residents.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 25, 2015
Cash shortfall among the elderly could push Japan over the edge
Last summer the welfare ministry reported that a record number of households were receiving government assistance, and 47.1 percent of these households were made up of either elderly people only or the elderly and unmarried family members under 18. The media has been reporting for years that an increasing...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 20, 2015
China paper blames poor upbringing for top-level graft
Poor family upbringing is to blame for some of the most serious corruption facing China and officials should learn from the examples of heroic figures from the earliest days of Communist rule, a top paper said on Monday.
EDITORIALS
Apr 20, 2015
New assistance for the needy
A new welfare system that begins this month should not be used as an excuse to deny livelihood assistance to those who need it.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Apr 17, 2015
Mie homeless man walks after mercy killing
A man who strangled his father to death in what he called a mercy killing clouded by emotional distress walked free from court Friday after the judge heard a harrowing tale of hardship and gave him a three-year prison term suspended for four years.
EDITORIALS
Apr 11, 2015
Kids in poverty need better diet
The government is planning a nationwide survey on how income affects child health, but what it really needs to focus on is making sure kids in low-income households can eat properly.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy / ABENOMICS — THE BOTTOM LINE
Apr 7, 2015
Under 'Abenomics,' rich thrive but middle class on precipice
The recent debate over wealth inequality has highlighted an unpleasant fact for policymakers — that the income gap between rich and poor is not shrinking, even though Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policies have been in play for two years now.
JAPAN
Apr 5, 2015
Health ministry to survey how family income affects child nutrition
The government plans to conduct its first nationwide survey on how family income affects children's health as concerns grow about the nation's growing child poverty problem, officials said.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 4, 2015
Magazines fixate on the roots of poverty
The oft-seen expression ichioku sō-chūryū translates roughly as "the perception of 'the 100 million,' i.e., the entire nation, as belonging to the middle class."
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health
Mar 25, 2015
Indian doctors find success in tackling hidden burden of TB
When Indian street-food seller Kumar Pal first began treatment for multidrug resistant tuberculosis two years ago, he quickly spiralled into depression and gave up hope of living.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2015
There's no exaggerating the role of two parents
Dismayed by inequality and the intergenerational transmission of poverty, the U.S. must face the truth that economic success depends less on whether your father was rich or poor than on whether you knew your father at all.
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 3, 2015
For North Korean defectors, fame brings cash — and suspicion
Kang Myung-do, then son-in-law of North Korea's premier, made a spectacular claim about Pyongyang's nuclear capability when he defected to the South over two decades ago, asserting the secretive country had built five atomic bombs.
WORLD
Feb 17, 2015
Copenhagen gunman's neighborhood no stranger to strife
Every Dane knows of Norrebro, the Copenhagen neighborhood where police shot dead the gunman suspected of carrying out shocking attacks on a synagogue and a cultural center hosting a free speech event.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 5, 2015
Vermont gas station attendant bequeaths millions to library, hospital
Perhaps the only clue that Ronald Read, a Vermont gas station attendant and janitor who died last year at age 92, had been quietly amassing an $8 million fortune was his habit of reading the Wall Street Journal, his friends and family say.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Feb 2, 2015
Going the extra mile for fair-trade fashion
Tokyo fashion industry insiders push the message that what we choose to buy and wear has consequences.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Jan 8, 2015
Activists to establish a special grave for Tokyo's homeless
Activists want to give Tokyo's homeless people dignity in death. They are raising funds to create a special grave for their ashes rather than the anonymous, communal disposal afforded to people who die without means and mourners.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 6, 2015
Working hard but staying poor
Many people in the Western world wrongly assume that solving the problem of poverty in the developing world primarily requires the creation of more jobs. The developing world has plenty of jobs. In the absence of any meaningful social welfare systems, the world's working poor need better jobs.

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'