[4] Japanese consumers have benefited from the nation's economic growth, while in turn they have stimulated the economy through demand for sophisticated products, loyalty to domestically produced goods, and saving and pooling investment funds.
[citation needed] The postwar years in Japan witnessed a steady rise in the average Japanese standard of living, together with a narrowing of differentials between blue-collar and white-collar workers.
[8] Collectively, trade unions (which engaged each year in a “spring offensive” to settle wages and bonuses) helped the bulk of the Japanese population to a share in the affluence brought by the expansion of national production.
[9] According to William G. Beasley, Japanese living standards were in many ways “undoubtedly impressive by the 1980s: high real wages, low unemployment rates, excellent health care, above average consumption of goods and services”.
[11] In spite of these negative perceptions, however, average living standards improved sharply in the 1970s and 1980s, and real household expenditures did rise during Japan's economic growth.
[10] Japan’s high level of economic growth in the postwar period was also accompanied by a rapid redistribution of income, while social policies such as the occupation land reform (together with LDP rural patronage and rice price support) improved the quality of life for farmers, and reduced the numbers of rural Japanese migrating to urban areas.
As noted by Ikuo Kabashima: The rapidly growing Japanese economy produced a high demand for labor, especially among young workers such as the rural migrants.
The increase in disposable income partly explained the economic boom of the 1980s, which was pushed by explosive domestic demand, as well as a sharp rise in the value of the yen after the Plaza Accord.
Today, the majority of Japanese employees not only enjoy job security and access to a range of occupational benefits, but a very high standard of living as well.
In addition, despite having a social security system that is less generous than that which exists in most developed countries, Japan has an egalitarian distribution of income that bears comparison with Scandinavia.
[19] As noted by Kenichi Ohmae in the early Nineties, “The standard of living has increased steadily over the past forty years; more than 90 percent of the people consider themselves middle class and reasonably happy about their life.”[20] In summing up Japan’s social and economic achievements, Jeff Kingston has noted that "Postwar Japan has experienced success in reconstructing a war-ravaged nation, raising living standards, renovating democracy, taming militarism and rejoining the community of nations.
It is stunning that despite this whirlwind of tumultuous and deracinating transformation, Japan has preserved and augmented its social capital and avoided the worst of the scourges that plague other advanced industrialized nations.
The relative absence of deep cleavages in society, the highly developed sense of community and success in containing the dislocation and social ills and modernization are a source of considerable strength in Japan.
They have enjoyed political stability, economic security, low crime, good health care, decent schools, adequate housing and an extraordinary level of public politesse.
The government inaugurated several policies to switch to non-rice crops, but they met with limited success and rice remained in oversupply (see agriculture, forestry, and fishing in Japan).
Until the mid-1970s, both public and private sectors pursued economic growth with such single-mindedness that prosperity was accompanied by severe degradation of both the environment and the quality of life (see environmental protection in Japan).
Japanese families still feel that saving for retirement is critical because of the relative inadequacy of official social security and private pension plans.
Japan was below average for wage differentials by gender and firm size, labor's share of total manufacturing income, social security and unemployment benefits, weekly workdays and daily work hours, overall price of land and housing, river pollution, sewage facilities, and recreational park areas in urban centers.
Some of these variables, especially pollution and increased leisure time, improved in the 1980s, and, in general, living standards in Japan were comparable to those of the world's wealthiest economies.
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[22] to 34.5% in 2009,[23] 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.
[25] 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.