Organizer and Chair: Deborah J. Milly, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Discussants: Gregory J. Kasza, Indiana University; Deborah Stone, Brandeis University
The Japanese welfare state of the 1990s faces a growing population of old people, falling birthrates, and a pattern of increased in-migration of persons of other nationalities. These challenges are occurring at a time of economic stagnation and calls for cutting back the size of government. In responding to these issues, how will Japan restore economic dynamism while providing social supports for those with special needs in an equitable manner?
These challenges are not unique to Japan, and several European countries in particular have also been responding to comparable problems. Major goals for the panel will be to explain recent policy changes in Japan, forecast likely future directions, and to compare Japanese social policies with those of other industrialized nations.
The papers will focus on the big new program of long-term-care insurance for frail older people, developments in family policy motivated in part by the concern with low birthrates, and the uneven process of providing access for non-Japanese to welfare state programs. Permeating discussion of these topics are several broad themes: the position of women at work and within the home, changes in the social policy process, notions of membership in Japanese society, and the problematical role of the welfare state today. To further encourage a comparative focus in discussion, we have arranged to have two discussants: one with relevant expertise on Japan and one with expertise on the United States and Germany.
Japanese Family Policy in Comparative Perspective
Patricia Boling, Purdue University
This paper will be a qualitative comparison of Japanese family support policies affecting working women with those in Sweden, France, Germany, and the U.S. It asks why nations at similar levels of economic and political development approach family policy issues so differently, and examines various explanations: demographic considerations, political institutions, economic and budgetary considerations, and notions about which issues are rightly the province of the state and which are better left to the private sector. By attending to the social, cultural and political values and orientations that frame current political and policy debates about how best to promote family welfare it aims to understand differing views about what count as significant political problems and what approaches are viewed as efficacious.
Why do a comparative study of Japanese family policy? First, the current crisis in Japan around the issues of rapid aging, low fertility rates and recession has aroused interest in understanding Japan’s policy predilections in this area, and in comparing Japan’s policies to those of other nations. Second, placing Japan in a broader comparative context allows us to locate Japan among the three models of welfare states that dominate the comparative social policy field (liberal, social democratic, and corporatist conservative), and to contribute to conceptual work on comparative social policy by incorporating the experience of a rapidly aging country that favors low expenditures for social welfare, a well-developed corporate welfare system, and traditional familialist solutions to caring for young and old.
Japanese Long-Term-Care Insurance and Welfare State Comparisons
John C. Campbell, University of Michigan; Mikiko Eto, Hosei University, Tokyo
The problem of caring for frail elderly people has been called the new frontier for the welfare states of industrialized nations. Japan, so long regarded as a laggard in welfare-state development, has taken a giant step with the Long-Term-Care Insurance (Kaigo Hoken) program it passed in 1997 and will start in 2000. Similarly to the German program started in 1995, Japan will provide institutional or community-based long-term-care services to everyone aged 65 and over who qualifies in terms of physical or mental disability—an estimated 12–14 percent of the elderly population. Neither family situation nor income will be taken into account in deciding eligibility or levels of support.
One question is why Japan undertook such an expensive program (at least $60 billion a year when mature) in a time of declared austerity in social policy? A second question is why it took the road of social insurance, rather than continuing to develop direct government service provision (the preference of most social welfare specialists in Japan, who idealize the Scandinavian model)? A third question is why the Japanese program differs so much from Germany: it is twice the size, and it requires the use of formal services from outside, with no subsidies for family caregiving? The last comparison in particular challenges our usual notions of Japanese social policy.
A Comparative Lens on Nationality, Citizenship, and the Japanese Welfare State
Deborah J. Milly, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
This paper asks how the Japanese welfare state’s treatment of nationality compares to approaches in other industrialized countries and about how this may be changing. The paper will assess Japanese developments in light of a table summary that specifies a hierarchy of welfare state benefits provided by other industrialized countries to non-nationals. Because access to some policies is treated as a basic right, and to others as an entitlement established by one’s residency status or nationality, the treatment of undocumented foreign migrants is a critical case for examining how notions of basic rights and a corresponding global citizenship impinge on a stricter notion of entitlement.
The paper asks a set of questions to enable comparison between Japan and other industrialized states regarding nationality as it affects eligibility for welfare state services and access to governmental and legal processes concerning them. However incremental, what policy changes have brought expanded access to benefits for non-nationals and what circumstances have set limits to change? What processes have brought about a more inclusive application of policies, even though the group involved could not vote; and how does this compare with European experiences? For disputed areas of ambiguity in eligibility for welfare state benefits by non-Japanese, how do the primary means through which change is attempted in Japan (appeal through the courts and efforts to influence administrative practice) compare to the sources of policy change in other industrialized countries, primarily Germany?