Schizophrenic social policy: Explaining discrepancies in levels of social support for the elderly and the unemployed in Japan.

摘要

The dissertation tests theories of comparative social policy on two social policy areas in Japan between 1970--2000. It pursues a theoretically-driven answer to an empirical puzzle: Why have Japanese expenditures for the elderly been generous throughout this period, while expenditures for the unemployed have been consistently miserly?; Initial quantitative analyses yielded several interesting conclusions. First, the percentage of Japanese social expenditures devoted to the elderly is just above the OECD average, while the percentage devoted to the unemployed is nearly 5 points below average, placing Japan 23rd out of 28 OECD nations in its unemployment expenditures. Second, regression analyses predicting elderly and unemployment expenditures showed that Japanese elderly expenditures could be explained largely through demographic considerations, while Japanese expenditures on the unemployed were significantly lower than expected, based on demographic, wealth, trade openness, and partisan variables. Thus no single theory of social policy could explain these divergent findings.; The dissertation argues that only historical-institutionalist arguments can make sense of these patterns, by emphasizing interrelationships between governmental and non-governmental actors involved in each policy area, by examining the effects of institutional rules and past policy legacies. In the case of Japan, the relationships between the major institutional actors---Ministry of Labor, Rengo (Federation of Labor Unions), and Nikkeiren (Employers' Association)---worked in ways that limited the 'voice' of the unemployed, even in the face of unprecedented increases in unemployment in the 1990s. The opposite was true for elderly-related social programs which have been championed by an expansionist Ministry of Health and Welfare, eager to use projections of an aging population to increase its budget.; The dissertation concludes that different institutional relations between bureaucracies and social organizations, as well as the capacities of different actors, are responsible for discrepant social policy patterns. These findings are of importance for understanding the sources of Japanese policy, and they offer a promising framework through which intra-national policy differences can be analyzed in the future.