People in Mississippi are Richer than People in Japan. Why Doesn’t it Feel Like That?

People in Mississippi are Richer than People in Japan. Why Doesn’t it Feel Like That?

thank God for Mississippi it’s been an oft repeated sentiment since the years following World War II used in common parliaments all across the United States and especially when the person speaking is located closer and closer to the state in question just as a British man presenting this video never heard it before but there we go but the American public’s gratitude for the southern state of Mississippi isn’t because they think it’s a gift to the union it’s because as long as Mississippi is out there their own state isn’t coming in last oh that was like Andy at school who’d always do worse than me in exams there was always Andy home to a bit under 3 million people situated on the Gulf of Mexico and or Gulf of America and about the same size as the nations of Greece or North Korea Mississippi ranks at the bottom of nearly every metric from poverty rates to education to income to water safety to life expectancy to homicides and more mississippi is either at the bottom or very near the bottom on almost every item for which American states can be measured against each other so with Mississippi in mind we’d like to present something of a paradox why is it that America’s single poorest state per capita is still far richer per capita than many of the world’s most developed nations dismal as Mississippi’s GDP per capita may be when compared to the United States at about $53,000 per head in 2024 it still rivals rich nations like the UK or Germany breaks basically even with Canada France and the UAE and far surpasses nations like Spain South Korea Saudi Arabia and Japan so how is it that despite pulling in more capital per person than pro states technocracies and undeniably rich nations Mississippi and other poor US states are somehow so terribly behind well like any good paradox we’ve chosen to present the quandry of Mississippi because there is way more to the story once we start digging but before we do dig let’s establish some terms of engagement instead of bouncing all across the globe we’re going to zero in on the comparison case of Japan with the GDP per capita measured in US dollars of just about 34,000 per person per year again Mississippi is at 53,000 nearly a full 20,000 higher japan is the world’s fifth largest economy mississippi is America’s 35th largest japan consistently ranks among the top 10 nations in the world on healthcare mississippi ranks at last place in America japan came in 13th in the global innovation index last year mississippi came in last place when compared against US states japan came in at number two last year for infrastructure behind only Germany japan ranked in America’s bottom five japan is among the top 10 safest countries in the world mississippi is among the three most dangerous states in America most important for our purposes when we try to compare the two as comprehensively as we can Japan is at or near the top of the worldwide list when it comes to quality of life while Mississippi remains predictably near the bottom when measured against the rest of the United States and to be clear this is not one of those situations where America’s worst is still better than everyone else’s best on the vast majority of metrics that we’ve listed Japan outperforms the United States while in the areas where America performs better like global innovation the gulf between America’s high innovating states and its low innovating states is absolutely massive and despite all of that our core observation remains per person the people of Mississippi are quite a bit richer than the people of Japan and obviously something isn’t adding up all right so to break down the many differences between Japan and the state of Mississippi we’re going to divide our analysis into three different parts first of all we’re going to discuss the differences between Mississippi and Japan at an individual level what they have to spend what they pay into the government and what they have to personally be able to afford in order to discuss their basic needs then we’re also going to discuss on the local level and talk about community public safety public health infrastructure and more and finally we’re going to zoom out and talk about nationwide factors the way that the American and the Japanese governments do or do not take part in bettering the lives of their people and why those decisions are made in the way that they are and just to be real clear there are poor parts of Japan as well the islands of Okinawa for example or the southern Kagashima Prefecture don’t come close to the prosperity of much of the rest of the nation but our point in today’s episode isn’t to claim that all of Japan is rich in some way that Mississippi could never achieve instead we’re focused on the difficult reality that Mississippi in its current state is wealthier per person than the vast majority of Japan while the situation on the grounds it just doesn’t match up on the individual level the differences between Mississippi and Japan aren’t so simple as a mistake of statistics as economically astute viewers have no doubt pointed out in the comment section already GDP per capita isn’t the same as take-home pay after all a national metric like GDP can’t really represent people’s situations by simply dividing the total figure by the number of people when it comes to individual income Mississippi should still be outperforming Japan according to 2023 data Mississippi’s median income was a bit over $30,000 for an individual and a bit under 55,000 for the median household for Japan the median income per individual was closer to $27,000 exchanged for the Japanese yen or while for a household it was far lower than Mississippi’s at under 36,000 the difference comes from something deeper and to understand the source we can start with cost of living overall the cost of living in Japan is actually more expensive than living in Mississippi with rent excluded a single person living in Mississippi can expect to spend about $750 a month to afford meals transportation utilities etc as with every statistic that we are going to discuss in this episode these figures are a matter of aggregated data no doubt some people in Mississippi will spend less others will spend more but that $750 or so compares to spending of the equivalent of about $920 a month in Japan also for a single person nor does the act of raising a family come with drastically increased costs for a person in Mississippi relative to what they’d have to pay in Japan with rent excluded a family of four in Japan can expect to pay the equivalent of nearly $3,300 per month while in Mississippi the average family of four would pay just $2,600 the real difference however is the cost of rent where in Japan the average single adult can find a decently positioned city apartment for just short of $600 per month and if they’re willing to live outside the city the costs might be closer to the equivalent of $400 for a single person in Mississippi however rent is expected to be about $1,100 more than double what a person would pay while living outside a city in Japan for a family the disparity is even greater a three bed apartment in Japan might cost around $1,400 a month if it’s reasonably wellplaced while outside a city it might cost as little as the yen equivalent of $800 in Mississippi it’ll be closer to $2,200 for that same family now the numbers briefly seem as if they might get easier for Mississippi when we dive deeper into household expenses granted the state does have the highest grocery tax in America a 7% tax that makes affording food considerably more difficult and not only that but Mississippi residents spend about 2.64% of their income on groceries in 2024 which is the highest proportion in America yet in Japan households spend up to 28% of their income on food amidst rising prices nationwide that might seem as it would offset the greater spending on rent in Mississippi but in reality it still doesn’t make up the gap and there are gaps elsewhere too the average household in Japan spends the yen equivalent of just $35 a month on personal transport whereas in Mississippi where driving is a fact of life in most places the average person pays several hundred a month on their car plus $25 to $50 every time they’d like to fill up their tank with gas depending on what they drive of course a person in Mississippi pays nearly double the utility payment you would expect on average in Japan plus at least $375 a month for health insurance and another 50 or so for car insurance at the same time a single adult in Japan can expect to spend the equivalent of about $85 a month as part of the nation’s health insurance program and a good bit less than Americans for insuring their car as well those costs do not offset when Japanese residents pay for their healthcare in Mississippi the average person spends about $11,000 on healthcare each year nearly $1,000 a month whereas in Japan the figure was the equivalent of about $4,000 a year less than 350 a month if a person has children then the average monthly cost of a preschool in Mississippi is over $600 whereas in Japan the cost would be barely half that and when it comes to the proportion of funds taken out of a person’s paycheck the average person in Mississippi is paying a good deal more than the average person in Japan a person earning the median individual income in Mississippi can expect to give up slightly over 20% of their paycheck while in Japan it’s closer to 13% once the costs of healthcare are deducted and those healthcare costs in Mississippi are still paid they’re just paid as a portion of what a person otherwise would keep after tax nor does wealth inequality explain the numbers suggesting that the typical Mississippi resident is spending far more than the typical person in Japan if Mississippi were host to a disproportionate number of very wealthy people that might be one thing but although income inequality is pronounced that’s more to do with Mississippi’s poorest people making so little than it is to do with the state’s richest people making a lot now one other place where Mississippi comes in last compared to the rest of the US is in the proportion of millionaires with just barely 4% of people in the country reporting wealth of a million dollars or more in assets for comparison New Jersey has the highest share of millionaires at around 10% versus states around the median at around 5 1/2 to 6% less than 3% of Japanese people have a net worth equivalent to a million US but poverty rates are lower 15.4% 4% for Japan versus 18% in Mississippi where is Japan’s poverty line is actually higher relative to median income taken together then the reasons for life in Mississippi being tougher than life in Japan on an individual level despite higher income per person are fairly straightforward albeit a bit grim the poorest people are poorer relative to their neighbors and the average person has to pay for more by themselves and the amount that they have to pay is considerably greater but the differences in quality of life between Mississippi and Japan aren’t just decided by what comes out of a person’s pocket instead there are a whole range of community factors to consider stronger safer healthier communities bring ample benefits to individual well-being and individuals who feel safer healthier and more secure in their communities are able to pursue opportunities from a stronger foundation we’ll start with the subject of public safety where Mississippi is something of a mixed bag while the rate of violent crime in Mississippi is lower than the US average the homicide rate is among the highest in the country mississippi incarcerates more people than most other states deaths by way of firearms are higher than most other states and it’s one of the most dangerous places for drivers in all of America the sources of those problems are complex and partly traced back to the problems of poverty and low opportunity that many residents face people living in poverty with few prospects to improve their situation are more likely to turn to crime young people join gangs at rates well above the national average and impoverished black communities in particular are prone to being both victimized at higher rates and seeing a higher proportion of violent actors come from their own neighborhoods the state’s law enforcement is underfunded and understaffed while resources to address substance use and mental health concerns and thus reduce the load of the police where possible are not nearly as robust as they are elsewhere jails are overcrowded courts move slowly and forensic facilities are underequipped for the job meaning that perpetrators are harder to catch harder to prosecute and harder to justify keeping behind bars the state capital Jackson has often been described as the murder capital of the United States with homicide rates in 2021 charted at 99.5 out of 100,000 people that’s nearly 15 times the national homicide rate in that same year but if the homicides in Jackson were 15 times higher than across the United States in 2021 then compared to Japan that same year Jackson’s homicide rates were 432 times higher for years Japan’s homicide rate has hovered around one homicide per 400,000 people annually and in a broader sense it’s widely regarded as being one of the very safest countries on the globe well part of that is due to far lower access to deadly weapons that Japanese citizens have the availability of guns and knives is far from the full story here japan pours money training and technology into its police who face little if any of the funding or staffing concerns observed in some US states those police are trained to proactively engage with their communities and are given the resources to do so instead of being tasked exclusively with responding to crimes they typically operate in parallel with strong social work and intervention programs dealing with mental health and substance use concerns before they manifest through violent crime and alongside the criminal justice system societal factors play a major role as we’ve said Japan has its fair share of people living in poverty but poverty and violent crime don’t correlate nearly as strongly as they do in the United States and Mississippi in particular for one thing a combination of higher employment rates and higher rates of school completion mean that people especially young adults are more likely to be otherwise occupied and will both have fewer economic incentives to turn to crime and simply have less available time in the day at the same time the nation places a heavy focus on mutual aid meaning that vulnerable populations are less likely to fall through the cracks also a quarter of the country’s population is a 65 or older not exactly a population group that’s known for committing crimes frequently on the subject of local systems Japan benefits from sending quite a bit of public funding to social and community institutions from volunteer dependent vocational schools and informal education programs to an emphasis on parent and neighbor involvement in children’s education to social welfare groups on the local level that have the resources to really get out in their communities beyond the country’s nationwide social safety net programs neighborhoods and municipalities have both the resources and the genuine will to actively maintain community especially in poorer areas where other resources are most scarce contrast that with Mississippi and the difference could not be starker the state has some of the least well-funded mental health services in the country while for community programs Mississippi relies largely on charity organizations that in practice have a really hard time soliciting donations the system that Mississippi has developed depends on the willingness of private philanthropic donors but those donors aren’t giving nearly enough to meet the state’s needs community support for those groups is limited at the best of times and absent at the worst leading to programs with lesser reach fewer volunteers and staff and far worse community engagement nor does the state invest in resources for rural communities who are quite often just on their own when it comes to public health the same dynamic emerges not only does Japan guarantee universal health care to all of its residents but it’s got the facilities to meet local need the nation has all the hospitals it could want especially in urban areas and public health centers are common doctors nurses and community health workers place a strong emphasis on preventative care especially to mitigate lifestyle factors that make disease more common the nation still has its share of health care deserts rural areas where a person would have to travel great distances to access quality care but on balance the nation’s approach to healthcare does well in meeting public need but where Mississippi is concerned public health infrastructure is just a fraction of what we’ve described a high proportion of the state population is uninsured and its health care deserts tend to be geographically larger and also more extreme hospitals are underfunded especially hospitals that serve poorer areas and qualified providers attempted elsewhere by the promise of better pay and better facilities lifestyle factors receive disproportionately little attention with around 40% of adults in the state considered obese third in the country and the quality of diet being lower especially for people living in poverty cigarette smoking is more prevalent especially for teenagers and young adults than it is elsewhere in America and both alcohol and hard drugs are abused more frequently too just as important is the question of housing and again the dynamic is precisely what the episode thus far would suggest japan has built comprehensive systems to ensure that its people can access adequate housing between robust offerings of government-built and subsidized housing to many different types of relief program rent is unusually affordable in Japan compared to most other nations especially in Tokyo while rural communities are often desperate for young people to move in meaning that housing costs there can be even lower in Mississippi however affordable housing is few and far between public housing is both underfunded and underbuilt with not nearly enough units to meet demand and not nearly enough low-cost units to ensure that poverty is not a precursor to homelessness eviction rates are among the highest in the country while laws against housing discrimination are among the weakest in issue after issue after issue the differences between Japan’s community resources and Mississippi are plain as day while Japanese working individuals don’t take home nearly as much on average as their counterparts in Mississippi communities have far more money to go around and that money is explicitly intended to serve those communities japan’s favored methods to strengthen communities include building up social networks ensuring consistent access to basic needs and ensuring that people are provided for as the default rather than on a case-byase basis mississippi by contrast doesn’t place nearly as much of a policy focus on access to housing healthcare or safe streets and the policies that it does put into action aren’t provided with the funding that would allow them to actually make a difference in each case Mississippi’s community systems overrely on philanthropy neglect to recruit enough personnel to ensure that highquality services are available and ultimately fail to prevent people from slipping through the cracks and just like Japan’s individual communities are influenced heavily by the national government the same is true for the state of Mississippi and its communities the role of federal authorities and programs are essential to account for partly because it represents a portion of the funds that individuals release through tax and partly because efforts that raise the quality of life in communities will by their very nature seek to work within the policy blind spots that federal policy doesn’t fully account for put another way it’s not necessarily a bad thing for federal systems to have gaps in what they provide and in the United States as actually a founding principle of the entire American republic the federal government takes care of some things and states take care of the others and in an ideal world the two levels of government are able to complement and counterbalance each other by default America’s federal government administers the social security program providing income to all elderly people and other select groups within society the federal government offers tax credits to relieve low and middle-income families it provides food assistance to people below or near the poverty line and it administers both Medicare health insurance to seniors and the disabled and Medicaid health insurance for lowincome families and individuals that’s nowhere near an exhaustive list but it accounts for the largest programs that Washington oversees many of these programs however are implemented by individual states as those states see fit while in areas where there’s an emergent need that the federal government doesn’t cover it’s for the states to pick up the slack and although the intention of that divide is to ensure that state governments can care for their people as they deem to be necessary on the premise that those smaller and better connected governments will be more in touch with local needs the reality is often oh so different across much of the United States gaps in federal care are not filled adequately at the state level and Mississippi is among the states that has proven least able to provide in some cases the state is working to expand services after past administrations have dropped the ball especially as it relates to healthcare and poverty initiatives but in those areas the state is still working its way upward from a difficult position in other cases the state’s attempts to fill in the gaps that federal support services leave out are either inadequate or non-existent political leaders have routinely carved chunks out of the state’s own revenues making programs even more difficult to fund while Mississippi does less to implement many federal programs than almost any other state and when we turn our attention to Japan two critical contrasts stand out about the way the country’s leaders provide social support the scope and scale of support offered on a federal level is far greater and for the most part when problems are left for communities to solve those communities prove more able to do so we’ve talked about Japanese aid programs on the community level but federally Japan provides far more extensive services to assist with the day-to-day costs of living guarantee food and school supplies to students ensure housing nationwide and care for the elderly not just through bare minimum payments but a combination of healthy stipens and cover for the costs of care everything from vocational aid to the cost of a funeral is covered those programs are well-run and when they rely on locals to implement policy at the community level those efforts operate through a clear chain of command in order to meet carefully monitored standards they’re not left up to chance and they’re not left up to charity and for the most part they’re not left up to prefecture governments those prefectures are asked to deliver social services but their role is to bridge the gap between local level implementation and federal level policy working as an intermediary instead of trying to do the best by themselves with what they have now as we come to the conclusion of today’s episode we can take a moment to step back and try and give a succinct answer to the question that we posed at the outset of this video some nearly half hour ago people in Mississippi America’s poorest and largely lowest performing state take home substantially more each year in pay than the people of Japan a nation widely hailed as one of the most developed on Earth but it doesn’t feel like that not when it comes to the economic social and personal factors that determine a person’s quality of life in that regard Japan is just as far ahead of Mississippi as Mississippi is head of Japan on individual income so what’s the difference perhaps the simplest answer would be simply waving your hands and saying it’s the social safety net but it’s more than that in Japan’s case the social safety net isn’t just expansive it is effective the nation has taken pains to build out programs that guarantee a roof over one’s head food in one’s belly and to the degree that it’s possible health for its citizens and their loved ones the proven track record of its programs fosters public trust and it’s that trust in Japan’s systems that enable its people to accept a situation where they have far less money in their pocket than somebody in America in exchange for accepting those circumstances Japan’s residents can rest assured that the basics are taken care of and yes they can still make enough money to improve their lives far beyond the basics if that’s what they choose to spend their money on whether they’re rich or whether they’re poor Japan’s residents live in a secure enough stable enough situation that mere survival isn’t an existential concern and when that fundamental condition changes individuals are far more able to make decisions and take risks without fear things are still far from perfect but things don’t have to be perfect in order to be manageable now could that system work if we’re transposed onto Mississippi quite frankly we’d hazard a guess that it wouldn’t or at least not anytime soon the idea that a combination of the American federal government and Mississippi state government could provide these sorts of services is practically unthinkable in today’s America existing programs are badly underfunded people are left to fend for themselves and when people endure individual hardship they’re well accustomed to the idea that nobody is coming along to help in essence American government hasn’t earned the trust required to even claim that they could offer services like Japan and if America were to attempt to do that today then the reasonable expectation would be to assume that those initiatives just won’t go very well japan spent decades proving to its people that the safety nets it guarantees are going to be there when its people are in need but for America to start providing those safety nets it would need to either redistribute a hell of a lot of money that isn’t just lying around or it would need to take even more of people’s earnings out of their pockets they would do that with no guarantee of success and as much evidence as the American people could possibly need to suggest that implementation of a new social program would fail like so many others before so why isn’t life in Mississippi as abundant or highquality or obscure as life in Japan that’s because Japan spent a really long time and a mindbogling amount of resources to create those conditions for its people and the US just hasn’t in a system like the one Japan has designed it’s harder to become a particularly wealthy person the odds of getting there are simply worse than they are in the US but it’s also harder to become a particularly impoverished person a particularly isolated person a particularly underresourced person than it is in the United States in the system that America has built some states will do well and some will do poorly and somebody namely Mississippi is going to come in last place but life on an individual level works like that too some people are going to do really well some people are going to do poorly and some people are going to come in last place maybe Andy in the trade-off that Japan makes first place isn’t quite so glamorous and last place isn’t quite so bad the Mississippi doesn’t make that trade-off and for the people who come in at last place in the state that so often comes in at last place well life can quickly become a hell of a challenge thank you for watching

Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than Japan—so why does life feel harder? We unpack taxes, healthcare, rent, and public services to reveal why money isn’t the only measure of prosperity.