Tokyo--Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled plans to set up a fund to help alleviate child poverty Thursday, in a country where one in six children is classed as poor.
The move follows a law passed by parliament last year aimed at tackling an issue that critics say has long been swept under the carpet in the world's third-largest economy.
"We need to support the independence of financially-constrained single parent families or families with many children," Abe told a meeting of politicians, business leaders and non-profit groups.
"I want to form a system in which the entire society helps children grow up," the prime minister said.
A memorandum adopted at the meeting called for the formation of a privately-financed fund to help groups providing education and other services for children facing poverty, news reports said.
The document did not specify how much money would be placed in the fund, but Abe pledged to secure revenues for the programme by December, the reports said.
"The fact that the government recognises child poverty as a national issue is a big step," Aya Abe, a professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University who has been researching child poverty in Japan, told AFP.
"But the government should also make a financial commitment or set a goal of how much they want to reduce the poverty rate."
In 2012, a record high 16.3 percent of children aged 17 or under were living in poverty -- defined as surviving on funds half that of the average disposable income.
That compares with 9.8 percent in Britain and 21.2 percent in the United States, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of rich countries.
The poverty rate jumps to 54.6 percent for children living in single-parent households in Japan, the worst in the OECD.
AFP
