Poverty and Politics: Evaluating Public Assistance in Japan
Poverty and Politics: Evaluating Public Assistance in Japan
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贫困与政治：评估日本的公共援助
DOI：
10.1556/socec.33.2011.2.3
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发表时间：
2006
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Kuniaki Nemoto
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ulrike Schaede;Kuniaki Nemoto
关于亚洲，特别是日本福利政策的文献大多涉及养老金和医疗保健。因此，我们对这些国家的扶贫工作知之甚少。日本是亚洲最富裕的国家，经常被誉为“福利资本主义”的典范。但是，在公共援助方面，日本实际上是落后的。本文介绍了日本公共援助的基本特征，分析了公共扶贫支出和制度覆盖率（扶贫对象人数）随时间变化的原因。我们发现，与其他“福利国家”，日本没有一个准自动的，制度化的反应，其公民的社会和经济困境的变化。相反，支出和覆盖面随着时间的推移而变化，并受到自民党在国会中所占席位数量的重大影响。我们的结论是，在日本的公共援助计划中，政治比扶贫本身更重要。
Literature on Asian, and in particular Japanese, welfare policies deals mostly with pensions and health care. As a result, we know very little about poverty relief in these countries. Japan, the most affluent Asian country, is often hailed as a poster child of “welfare capitalism”. However, when it comes to public assistance, Japan is in fact a laggard. We introduce the basic features of Japan’s public assistance program, and analyze what explains variations in both public spending on poverty relief, and the system coverage (the number of recipients of poverty relief) over time. We find that, unlike other “welfare nations”, Japan does not have a quasi-automatic, institutionalized response to changes in social and economic distress of its citizens. Rather, spending and coverage vary over time and are significantly influenced by the number of seats held by the Liberal Democratic Party in the Diet. We conclude that politics matter more than poverty relief per se in Japan’s public assistance program.