In a May ranking of children’s well-being in 36 developed countries, Japan came in about halfway, in 14th place.
Though it secured the top spot in physical health and made gains in the skills category — and rose from 20th place since the 2020 ranking — the survey conducted by UNICEF revealed Japan’s low performance (32nd) in mental well-being, which hasn’t seen much improvement over recent years.
These findings are corroborated by a grim statistic: Last year, Japan saw a record high of 529 child and teenage suicides. And both the number of child abuse and school refusal cases have steadily increased over the past decade, despite plummeting birth rates.
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