Japan’s Women Disproportionately Hurt by Covid-19 Income Slump

  • Research from MIT and Tokyo University shows impact disparity
  • Vulnerable female workers saw losses worth 9.75% of earnings
A woman walks near the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo.Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg
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After helping fuel a remarkable surge in Japan’s employment rolls -- in the face of a declining population -- women have become the hardest hit in the nation’s Covid-19 recession.

That’s one takeaway from a study of the damage to income and spending power on different segments of the Japanese labor market conducted by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Tokyo.