For quite a long period of time after the Second World War in Japan, the public works have played an important role of redistributing income from urban to rural areas. However, the role of public works in rural economy has fallen in recent years partly due to the technological renovation of construction works and partly due to the fall of public expenditure for public construction works. Instead, the role of social security in rural economy has become important, by redistributing income from urban areas of working population to rural areas of aged population. This article discusses the regional redistributive role of public pension insurance, medical care insurance and long-term care insurance and states the need to reform social insurance financing system so as to allocate the prospective medical and long-term care resource to individual elderly person, thus making it possible for the elderly to carry their welfare state on their back like a snail shell.
