2015 Volume 10 Pages 43-60
recent years, Japan’s increasingly aging population and the demanding financial conditions faced by national and local governments are calling for reforms of various administrative/financial systems. As a result, a succession of moves has explored restructuring the current administrative and financial regional frameworks, creating interesting discussions in reference to geography. A typical example is the widespread merging of municipalities in Japan from the early- to mid-2000s. Since the start of a long-term care insurance system in FY
2000, flexibility has been introduced to the framework of insurer regions in which insurance finances are kept.
The wave of municipal mergers that took place (especially around 2005) greatly impacted the number of wide-area insurers and member municipalities. After peaking at 69 in April 2003, the number of wide-area insurer regions fell drastically, but the number of insurers remained at 39 and the number of member municipalities fell to 201 by April 2014 (11.5% of the nationwide total of 1,742
municipalities). The numbers of wide-area insurer regions and member municipalities indicate that over 10% of nationwide municipalities remain members. By April 2009, the insurer framework of 32 of those 69 regions had disappeared; 37 regions continued to exist.
Fairness among member municipalities based on the relationship between benefits (services provided) and burdens (premiums) in a wide-area insurer region can be examined by comparing the index of differences among municipalities if each municipality were to switch to individual insurer administrations. The indices of each member municipality improved through the big mergers of the Heisei period, and some municipalities increased the gap compared to individual administration.
Although the size of municipalities has grown by mergers, many member municipalities have retained joint insurer frameworks, suggesting a desire for joint administrations among municipalities in the post-Heisei major merging era. We need to pay attention to wideranging collaboration in neighboring municipalities.
Keywords: big merger of Heisei, local administrative/financial systems, long-term care insurance, wide-area union,
basic autonomous bodies
