THE EDITOR – A survey of people receiving welfare in Japan found that most felt some kind of guilt or shame about doing so.
Alalink, a provider of low-cost smartphone services to people in financial difficulty, conducted a survey in May on users of its Anyone Smartphone service who are receiving public assistance. In total, 552 responses to the survey were received.
Among those surveyed, 60.7% said they felt guilty about receiving public assistance but had no other choice, while another 12.1% felt ashamed to be recipients of such assistance. Meanwhile, 21.4% of the respondents saw the assistance as a natural right.
The survey revealed that 67.2% of the respondents had given up on being able to secure adequate meals due to financial hardship. This result shows that despite the growing problem of food waste on large scale, there are at the same time people struggling to get enough to eat due to poverty.Â
Additionally, 46.9% of respondents said they had given up on owning a smartphone or affording the monthly service fee, despite such devices now being essential for social participation.
In the open-ended responses, many respondents expressed concerns about people looking down on them because of stories circulating about welfare fraud.
Amid the widespread stigma against welfare recipients, only 41.5% of respondents said they had informed friends or family about receiving public assistance, while 26.4% had told no one at all. Over 90% reported having no person or system they could turn to in times of genuine need.Â
These findings highlight that people are suffering from the dual burden of poverty and isolation.
