Survey: Low-Income Households with Children Want Short or No School Summer Vacation; Wary of Increases in Expenses

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:03 JST, July 7, 2024

A survey has found that 60% of low-income households with children want to shorten or eliminate school summer vacations.

The survey was conducted by Kidsdoor, a Tokyo-based non-profit organization that works on poverty issues.

These households cite the increase in their expenses during the holidays as the reason, and the group is calling for more support from the government, claiming that high prices are exacerbating the deterioration of household finances.

The survey was conducted via the internet between May and June, primarily targeting households with children whose annual household income is less than 3 million yen and received responses from 1,821 households.

The survey asked 1,399 households with elementary and junior high school students about summer vacations. The results showed that 47% of the households would prefer a shorter vacation and 13% would prefer no vacation. The most common reason given in the multiple-choice question was that “having children at home costs a lot of money” at 78%.

More than half of the households said they had “no special plans” for the summer vacation, and one respondent said, “It’s painful, and I blame myself that even though I want my children to do something special [during the vacation], I just cannot do that.”

As a result of the price increases, 98% of households said that their household finances were worse off than at the same time last year.

The survey also found that 69% of households with one parent and one child spend less than 30,000 yen per month on food, which is less than the 30,000-40,000 yen that they would like to spend on food to maintain their health.