For the fifth time in the last 7 years, the economy of Japan has gone into a deep recession. despite being the third largest economy in the world, Japanese singles and families continue to struggle to make ends meet and to even buy food or clothing.

Despite a per capita income of around $37,000, most Japanese simply can’t seem to make ends meet in an economy that has been totally ravaged by economic depression. Many things have contributed to the dilemma, especially the Japanese mindset, and the hardest to be hit, as usual, are the children, according to The Los Angeles Times.

One young 30 year old Japanese mother with 2 young daughters explains that her weekly budget for food is just $24. She does her best to haunt the stores and shops for discounts and the best prices but it still isn’t good enough to feed everyone. Last month she ventured down to the city hall and received a food bank package. She has been going every week and is thrilled that the package includes fresh vegetables for the family.

She doesn’t tell her husband, however. She knows he would be furious at the thought of his family taking charity. It would be a loss of pride and face which no Japanese man ever wants to be faced with. Even if someone knew and the word got out that she was getting the food bank packages, her children would be ridiculed and bullied in school. Being poor, she says, is a shameful thing in Japan. She says that it makes you appear as if you are a deadbeat and someone who isn’t trying hard enough for her family.

Japan is mired in an almost continuing recession that just may as well be labeled as a 7 year long depression. Nearly 20 percent of Japan’s children live in homes that bring in less than $10,000 a year. For single parent homes with children, almost every one headed by a mother, nearly 55 percent of them live in dire and struggling poverty. There are 1.4 million single parent homes in Japan headed by a mother and 223,000 that are headed by a father alone.

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has been taking most of the heat for the dire straights most Japanese find themselves in. His economic policies have not moved the country out of recession despite his calls to increase government spending and to integrate more women into the Japanese workforce. The only ones it seems to have helped, says a spokeswoman at Tokyo University, has been the nation’s export moguls. But Abe’s policies, she says, has not helped families or small businesses at all.

Nearly 40 percent of Japan’s workforce are now in part time or temporary jobs since the nation stopped guaranteeing lifetime employment. That is nearly half of the nation that simply can’t support themselves economically. Japan’s dire poverty situation was never mentioned and wasn’t really uncovered until a major report about it got widespread national attention in 2009.

Many Japanese, especially young families with children, hope the government will start making the child support allowances keep up with inflation and to cut consumption taxes so that they are not such a huge burden to just trying to keep everyone’s head above the proverbial water.