Agriculture, forestry, and fishing in Japan
Agriculture, farming, and fishing form the primary sector of industry of the Japanese economy together with the Japanese mining industry, but together they account for only 1.3% of gross national product. Only 20% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation, and the agricultural economy is highly subsidized.
Standard of living in Japan
Over the past two decades or so, inequality in Japan has grown as a result of economic difficulties that Japan has faced since the end of the economic boom of the 1980s. This problem has been characterised by a rise in the percentage of the workforce employed on a temporary or part-time basis, from 19% in 1996 to 34.5% in 2009, together with an increase in the number of Japanese living in poverty. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the percentage of people in Japan living in relative poverty (defined as an income that is less than 50% of the median) rose from 12% of the total population in the mid-Eighties to 15.3% in 2000. In 2005, it was estimated that 12.2% of children in Japan lived in poverty. From 1985 to 2008, the percentage of non-regular workers (those working on fixed-term contracts without job security, seniority wage increases, or other benefits) rose from 16.4% to 34.1% of the workforce. Various observers have come to describe Japan as a “disparity society”, a socially divided society with stark class differences and inequalities (in a country where around 90% of the population have regarded themselves to be middle-class in various surveys). The rise in income inequality in Japan arguably contributed to the election of the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009, which promised to reduce socio-economic inequalities through policies such as an expanded welfare system. Despite these problems, the average standard of living in Japan remains amongst the highest in the world.