Recently, the term of the social capital (SC) has been used to analyze and evaluate the characteristics of the community. SC is defined as "the characteristic of the society organization like 'trust', 'normal', and 'network' which can raise social efficiency by making the people's cooperative behavior more active" (Putnam, R. ). Civic actions by Non Profit Organizations (NPO) and volunteering are the elements of SC, or one of the indexes of SC. The cultivation of SC and the activation of the civic actions produces is "the positive feedback relation" of mutual benefits. It was found that the relation of SC joint index and perfect unemployment rate and the number of criminal offenses is negative, and the relation of SC and total fertility rate is positive. Therefore, it became clear that SC influenced the health condition, welfare conditions, and the public safety in the community.
It is possible that SC is decreasing in the local citie s that are affluent relatively and SC is either unchanged or growing in the metropolitan area in these twenty years. We must activate the function of the local connecting groups and NPO, which become the bearers of the activities, to strengthen a community function. A key to success is the strong willingness to the local needs.
Because the connecting-type SC has a strong internal loyalty, it t e n ds towards the exclusive behaviors or toward the limitation of the freedom. The bridging-type SC will play an important role in creating trust and cooperation in the community. And it can strengthen the relation with the outside and increase access to an opportunity from the outside.

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The concept of social capital has been dramatically diffused not only to many academic fields but also to many policy areas. One of the reasons of applying of this concept could be the multiple dimensions of social capital and its adaptability to many fields. There are lots of debates and discussions on the concept of social capital in the fields dealing with health and illness. Some researchers of public health, specifically of social epidemiology have been interested in social determinants of health for about two decades. Among them income distribution have been the one of the most popular issues and the researchers debated its effects on population health in the developed countries. The way of income distribution has a possibility to apply the concept of social capital to this research field in that it could be called a ecological factor. And focusing on the area differences in health could be one of the impetuses to encourage the researchers to think of the relationship between social capital and health. When thinking about the regional differences in health, it is necessary to distinguish between compositional effects contextual effects on health conditions among specific regions. The concept of contextual effect is a kind of a key concept of familiarity to that of social capital. In this article, the background and trend of the development of social capital in this field and several typical empirical data are reviewed briefly. And the implication of the concept of social capital to policy fields, especially social welfare could be examined.

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The aims of this paper are to introduce the present state of the social support studies, to reformulate its theories, and to propose suggestions for social capital studies.
Social support was conceptualized as the interperson a l factors buffering the effects of negative life events on individuals, and its entire structure was examined by empirical studies.
There are three 'needs' related to social support: 1) needs suppose d by the support recipients,2)`recipient' s needs' supposed by the support providers, and 3) needs 'contributing to the recipient's well-being' (these needs are found by the researchers). We can re-examine previous socia l support studies from the perspectives on these three needs.
These social support studies could virtu a lly be equal to the empirical studies of care. 'Availability of social support', which has been verified as a critical factor in social support studies, means capability of fulfilling the needs by care, and we can see it as an example of the significance of 'capability' by care.
As social support studies were a part of the studies of interpersonal resources in the health studies or mental health studies, its influence to other study realms was not so strong. However, there has been an accumulation of more expanding areas of findings and theories. The social capital concept of setting unit of analysis on individuals has much common components with social support studies.
We can look forward to further theoretical possibilities of the social capital s tudies by setting unit of analysis on collectivity. Models setting unit of analysis on individuals can be utilized as theories to explain the relevance to macro level factors.

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The burden of care is increasing in Japan as the result of the aging of the population, on the one hand. On the other hand, more women are working now as the industrial structure changes, the rate of economic growth decreases, and more women hold positive attitudes toward work. Did such social changes after the World War II affect the experiences of care-giving among women? If so, how and in what aspects were they changed? Using National Survey of Family Research Japan 2001 (NFRJs01), this paper compares the three cohorts of women on their care-giving experiences and their determinants from the life course perspectives.
As a result of the analyses, I found that the likelihood of care-giving significantly increased in among those who were born after the 1940s, so that the experiences of "care-giving for at least period of time in their middle age" have become more common for this cohort. As for the determinants of caregiving, the likelihood of care-giving among the women whose husbands are the eldest son across cohorts is constantly higher across cohorts, as they are more likely to live with the parents of husbands, on the one hand. On the other hand, the low likelihood of care-giving among full-time workers is observed only among the most recent cohort.

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The purpose of this study is to explore how elders with senile dementia talk about the problems that they have and what process proceeds during their group talking.
Group interviews were conducted for seven elders wit h senile dementia in the early stages. The contexts, forms and techniques of their talk were analyzed qualitatively. The main topics were the forgetfulness, failures, and a sense of alienation and the loss of their roles in the family. They shared their problems and experiences, confirmed the common points in others' narratives, and they constructed the sense of community in the process of talking and sharing their experiences. They immediately and correctly read the contexts of others' talks. This seems to show that a local culture was formed based on the common experiences of the members. They had become able to judge things from various angles by the interaction with others who had different opinions and backgrounds. They also made objections to their families and caregivers and they exchanged their views on their own schemes for the problems. It is concluded that elders with senile dementia in the early stages tried to grapple with their problems in a positive manner.

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Faced by huge welfare costs, the Giuliani administration in N. Y. C. started welfare reforms in 1994to cut the welfare caseloadnumbers of welfare recipients and reduce welfare dependency by improving recipients' self-sufficiency. Although Giuliani' s welfare reforms did drastically reduce the number of welfare recipients, they did not succeed in helping recipients become self-sufficient. This paper clarifies this point.
Giuliani outsourced the employment support programs to the private sector or other government agencies through the performance-based contracting. He also introduced an information management system in order to keep constant track of the condition of each recipient and the staff performances of each organization. The main component of the welfare reforms was the employment support programs: Skills and Placement (SAP), Employment Services Placement (ESP) and the Work Experience Program (WEP). These programs were designed to make the recipients become self-sufficient. SAP required public assistance applicants to look for work, and ESP encouraged the recipients to get jobs. When the recipients could not get jobs, they had to participate in WEP.
The reforms, in fact, succeeded in reducing the n umber of welfare recipients by forcing them to participate in the employment support programs. In effect, SAP made it difficult for the eligible people to apply for public assistance. As for ESP, it was advantageous for more employable recipients, but failed to help most recipients, who had few skills, to find jobs. The work conditions of those who ended up in WEP were teiTible, so that many refused to participate and were disqualified from receiving benefits. Furthermore, those who stayed with the program, despite the conditions, exhausted their time-limited benefits without getting any skills or education. Thus, although the welfare reforms led to a reduction of the number of recipients, they did not succeed in helping the recipients become self-sufficient.

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