Жапония әлеуметтік қамтамасыздандыру жүйесінің ерекшеліктері

Overview of welfare in Japan
Social welfare, assistance for the ill or otherwise disabled and the old, has long been provided in Japan by both the government and private companies. Beginning in the 1920s, the Japanese government enacted a series of welfare programs, based mainly on European models, to provide medical care and financial support. During the post war period, a comprehensive system of social security was gradually established. Universal health insurance and a pension system were established in 1960. The futures of health and welfare systems in Japan are being shaped by the rapid aging of the population. The mixture of public and private funding has created complex pension and insurance systems, meshing with Japanese traditional calls for support within the family and by the local community for welfare recipients.

Japan's welfare state has a non typical conservative regime. Similar to other conservative countries, Japan has an occupational segmented social insurance system. Pre war Japan once adopted a German style social policy. Japan also borrowed ideas of pensions and health from the German system. In addition, Japan's welfare state embodies familialism, whereby families rather than the government will provide the social safety net. However, a drawback of a welfare state with the familialism is its lack of childcare social policy. In Japan, 65% of the elderly live with their children, and the typical household is composed of three generations. The difference between Japan's welfare state and the traditional conservative system is the residual welfare state and the significantly low social transfer rate that Japan has. The social policies of the 1960s and 1970s were made as a compensation for failed industrial and economic policies. The social policy became a platform of electoral strategies only in the 1980s and 1990s, which happened after Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its domination in the parliament in 1993. Also, social welfare programs extended to areas that were not productive and to people like the elderly or disabled who were not productive. Finally, the Japanese government provided social care programs to the elderly and children, along with the policy that promoted general equality. This contradicted the humanistic aspects of Confucianism's explanation, suggesting it was not appropriate to describe the Japanese welfare system as a "Productivist Welfare Regime".

Japan also has comparatively low social spending: among the OECD countries in 1995, Japan spent only 14.0% of its GDP on social expenditures, lower than many other OECD countries: this figure compares to 15.4% in the US, 20.4% in the UK, 19.8% in Italy, 26.6% in Germany, 28.3% in France, and 32.5% in Sweden. Since Japan maintained sustained economic growth after World War II and had increasing equality, Japan's economic and social structure was perceived as somehow different from the European and North American models. This difference was explained in 2000 by a model called the "Productivist Welfare Regime". The model argued that the central economic policies conducted by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party from 1955 through 1993 caused Japan's economic growth in the post war era. Since the Productivist Welfare Regime purposely provided extended social welfare only to those linked to productive sectors in society, to encourage economic production, it provided the economic gain. The Japanese familialism of its social care system, based on its Confucianism tradition, relieved the government from having to face social welfare stress, and undermined necessary gender welfare in Japan. Government expenditures for all forms of social welfare increased from 6% of the national income in the early 1970s to 18% in 1989. Medical insurance, health care for the elderly, and public health expenses constituted about 60% of social welfare and social security costs in 1975, while government pensions accounted for 20%. By the early 1980s, pensions accounted for nearly 50% of social welfare and social security expenditures because people were living longer after retirement. A fourfold increase in workers' individual contributions was projected by the twenty first century.

The earliest Japanese idea of welfare first appeared in 1874 during the Meiji Period when Mercy and Relief Regulation introduced a cash allowance exclusively to orphans under 13, those who were unable to work due to illness, disabilities or old age and those who were under 15 or over 70 and lived in extreme poverty. In 1897, the Japan Social Policy Association was established and was modeled on the equivalent German association. The concern of social work increased in the Japanese government. In the 1920s, large companies, such as Kanegafuchi Spinning Company and Tokyo Spinning Company, adopted a company welfare system to provide occupational welfare while there are not any signals of trade union based welfare systems. In 1929, the Poor Relief Act was passed to relieve the tensions between labor and capital. The Poor Relief Act recognized the obligation of the state to support the poor with the national income. In 1938, after the Second Sino Japanese War, the government officially established the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Japan adopted the familialism as part of the welfare system to enhance the national cohesion. In 1947, the new Constitution came into effect. Article 25 recognized the right of all people to maintain the minimum standards of cultured living and it emphasized the obligation of the state to provide social welfare, social security and public health. The Japanese government put this obligation into practice. From 1947 to 1970, the government legislated the Child Welfare Act (1947), the Physically Disabled Persons Welfare Act (1949), the Social Welfare Act (1951), the Act for the Welfare of the Mentally Retarded Persons (1960), the Act for the Welfare of the Aged (1963) and the Act on Welfare of Mothers with Dependents and Widows (1964). During the 1970s and 1980s, Japan adopted a Japanese style welfare society. Also In 1973, Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei introduced the "Welfare Year One." Owing to the oil shock and large government spending in social policy, Japan suffered from the deficit and recession. The government tried to control the social expenditure by reforming the National Health Insurance and the public pension system. In the 1990s, due to the severe aging society problem, the focus moved to social support to develop social service for child rearing and care for the elder and working women. In 2012, the government promoted a production first policy, called Abenomics and redirected the attention from welfare and social protection to economic recovery.

Japan's government also controls the retail price of medical equipment in order to lower medical costs on people.

The Minimum wage law, introduced in 1947 but not enacted until 1959, was designed to protect low income workers. Minimum wage levels have been determined, according to both region and industry, by special councils composed of government, labor, and employment representatives.

Since the 1980s, the government has established several laws to gradually promote women's social status and gender equality. In 1986, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was approved, and it reduced barriers for women in business. In 1992, the Child Care Law allowed one of a child's parents to gain up to one year partially paid leave to care for the child. In 1994, the government defined gender equality for the nation: men and women are equal members to participate in any field of society, and both genders are equal in political, economic, social, and cultural benefits with shared responsibility. In 1997, the Nurse Care Insurance Law reduced the stress on women by distributing the cost of caring for the elderly across the whole society. In the same year, Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryotaro recognized gender equal social policy as an indispensable theme in his speech to the Council for Gender Equality. In 1998, the Law to Promote Specified Nonprofit Activities reduced the restrictions for non profit feminine groups to acquire legal status. In 1999, the Basic Law for a Gender Equal society passed and the government started to draft the Basic Plan for a Gender Equal Society, which is updated every five years. Although gender equal policy is still developing, in the aspect of education it has been quite successful: the college enrollment rate for women in Japan soared from 12 percent in 1980 to 32 percent in 2000, and 46 percent in 2012. However, gender inequality in Japan continues to be evidenced by the absence of women in positions of authority. Because the Japanese welfare system has a close relationship with businesses, both entities must adopt gender equal practices for Japanese society to achieve gender equality. Pursuit of gender equality is an ongoing effort in Japan.

Japanese law technically states that only Japanese citizens are eligible to receive public assistance. However, in actual practice, foreign permanent residents with no legal restrictions preventing them from working in Japan are allowed to receive welfare payments. In 2011, this de facto situation was upheld by a Fukuoka High Court decision in favor of a 79 year old Chinese woman with permanent resident status who had been denied social welfare payments by the Oita city government. as of 2014 the Japanese Supreme Court has ruled that foreigners are not entitled to receive welfare payments.