2014 Volume 5 Issue 3 Pages 38-61
The "Child Allowance" established in 2010-2011 was the first universal allowance for children without income testing in Japan. Many contradictions in Child Care Benefits policies established under earlier governments were supposed to be resolved. But the Child Allowance was abolished before its significance could be appreciated. The restoration of income tested benefits accompanied by tax deductions for families with children under the age of sixteen will strengthen gender bias in Japanese society and weaken social solidarity. The policy to counterbalance the child allowance with childcare services under the "straight choice between allowance in kind and allowance in cash" theory would lead to a cutback in budgets for children. The real contradiction exists in the choice between a combination of public nurseries and the universal child allowance based on a tax-financed system, and a policy of quasi-marketized childcare services and childcare vouchers based on childcare insurance. Would Japanese social policy and feminism choose the latter ? However, they should not ignore the significance of universal benefits based on the tax-financed system.
Annals of the Society for the Study of Social Policy
