Pension Reform in 2004 : Birth of Welfare Politics?(International Symposium)

抄録

An Upper House election was conducted in Japan in 2004. Although the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) managed to maintain the power, the election resulted in a defeat for the LDP. One of the causes of the defeat was the pension reform of the same year. This paper aims to look into the background of this pension reform. In the time of the proto-welfare state, the coverage of the Japanese public pension system gradually widened, and a state of universal pension coverage was reached in 1961. After that point, the Japanese public pension system consistently continued to expand in terms of the benefit level as well and a dramatic improvement was implemented in 1973. From s social expenditure point of view, this year marked the beginning of formation of the Japanese welfare state. 1973, however, was also the year of the first major oil crisis and the year when the period of "welfare state crisis" started on a global scale. For this reason, the consistent theme of the pension reforms that have been promoted in Japan in 1985 and onward has been retrenchment. The public pension system is supported by substructures that can be categorized into the fields of [1] population composition, [2] production field and [3] reproduction field. The Japanese pensions originally assumed [1] a pyramid-shaped population composition, [2] stable employment and [3] division of labor based on gender; however, these assumptions went through a complete collapse in the 1990s due to [1] a rapidly dropping birth rate, [2] flexible employment and [3] degenderization. This also forms a part of the background of the pension reform of this time. The pension reform in 2004 mainly attempted to adapt the system to the changes in the population composition and an indexation linked to the population composition was introduced. However, sufficient countermeasures against more flexible employment and degenderization were not taken, and remain as future challenges.