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16 percent of the population of Japan live in poverty, and 35 percent of workers are in irregular employment. Almost one in six Japanese, or 20 million people, are poor. The poverty rate for children aged 17 or younger rose to a record high of 15.7 percent in 2009. Japan’s poverty rate has doubled since the nation’s real estate and stock markets collapsed in the early 1990s, ushering in two decades of income stagnation and even decline (source).
Japan’s poverty rate is measured by the proportion of people earning less than half of the country’s median income. This is similar to the measurement system used in the U.K., but different from the American system. When the same measurement system is applied to the U.S., the poverty rate there would be 17.1%, slightly higher than in Japan and slightly higher than the official U.S. poverty rate.
It’s very hard to come by datasets or graphical representations. This is the best I could do:
