Economic Policy in the Developed Word before 2008

Abstract

Almost one in six Japanese lived in poverty in 2007 (www.tokyow-eekender.com/…/poverty-in-japan). Experts estimate the poverty rate doubled after the real estate and stock markets collapsed in the early 1990s. After years of economic stagnation and widening income disparities, this once proudly egalitarian nation is belatedly waking up to the fact that it has a large and growing number of poor people. Japan’s poverty rate, at 15.7 percent, was close to the OECD’s figure of 17.1 percent in the USA, whose glaring social inequalities have long been viewed with scorn and pity here (www.oecd.org/…/OECD2013-Inequality-and-Poverty).