The General Theme of the 144th Annual Meeting （May 14, 2022） was “Social policy towards 2050 : Quest for sustainable environment and society”. This paper explains the purpose of setting the theme, outlines the four reports, and provides subsequent discussion. The study of social policy deals with planning of social policies. For planning of future social policy, inspection of the past and existing discourse on the future of society or social policy, is critical. Regarding social policies towards 2050, it is important to consider the sustainability of the changing natural and social environments.

Various policy ideas have been proposed to position social policy as a means of inclusion for those who have been socially excluded. However, social inclusion in a society in which exclusionary pressures are at work is self-contradictory. How is it possible to transform society into a more inclusive one, while welcoming people into society and curbing exclusionary pressures ? This study organized the development of inclusive social policies into three stages and introduced the idea of Basic Assets as a framework for reorganizing previous policy discussions into a new comprehensive theory of social inclusion.

This paper examines nursing care technology from the perspective of ethics of care. When considering the future sustainability of the long-term care, it is necessary to consider the use of technology from the perspective of the care values, rather than simply narrowing down to the issue of improving productivity and efficiency due to human resource shortages and financial problems. In pursuit of contextualizing technology in long-term care, the paper argues that Illich’s theory of “tools for conviviality” is suggestive in figuring out what kind of technology is appropriate and how to implement it. Taking a comprehensive view of the older people’s life is another crucial point in developing/introducing care technology. Then the paper investigates the welfare governance of long-term care technology policy process, and finally argues that universal and localized care technology can be a future vision of care technology.

Various predictions have been made regarding how technological innovation will change employment. Although the predictions vary widely, most agree that new technologies will replace existing jobs to some extent and that social investment policies such as education and training, redistribution, and income security will be necessary to address the anticipated change in employment. However, in reality, the political response is inadequate. This is not because politics did not pay attention to the predictions, but rather because future predictions themselves were influenced by the political preferences and the imagination of society at the time of each prediction.

In this study, content analysis is employed to examine newspaper articles and policy documents published between the 1980s and 2019 regarding future predictions about the relationship between technological innovation and employment, and examine how observations about society and political wills at each point in time intervened in these predictions. By doing this, several forms of discourse were found in which future projections on employment are not connected to the expansion of social security, and issues that should be considered when thinking about social policy in 2050 were proposed.

More nation states are now committing to zero net carbon by 2050 at the latest, which is encouraging, but none have faced up to the transformation of economies, societies and lives that this will entail. This article considers two scenarios for a fair transition to net zero, concentrating only on climate change, and discusses the implications for contemporary ‘welfare states’. The first is the Green New Deal framework coupled with a ‘social guarantee’. I argue that expanded public provision of essential goods and services would be a necessary component of this strategy. The second scenario goes further to counteract runaway private consumption by building a sufficiency economy with ceilings to income, wealth and consumption. This would require a further extension of state capacities and welfare state interventions. The article provides a framework for comparing and developing these two very different approaches.

The purpose of this paper is as follows. After giving an overview of the support system for the care of the elderly and persons with disabilities in Japan, it traced the process of the two systems growing closer to one another from the establishment of the long-term care insurance system to the present, and a perspective for considering future care policies for the elderly and persons with disabilities in Japan was presented. The following were the results : ⑴ currently, care for the elderly and persons with disabilities are dealt with separate systems, but during the transition of the care support system for persons with disabilities since 2000, it has become closer to the mechanism of the long-term care insurance system, and it has many commonalities and similarities with the long-term care insurance system ; ⑵ in the discussion over the revision of long-term care insurance, the official goal was to “universalize the system,” but the true purpose was to secure financial resources for the sustainability of the system, and although most opinions support reduction of the scope of insured persons and beneficiaries, this has not been realized ; and ⑶ the services of the long-term care insurance system in the future must be reconsidered, and comprehensive discussion of the care support system for the elderly and disabled is necessary.

The disability rights independent living movement has created a long-term services and support system, enabling 24-hours care for the severely disabled. Currently, this type of care is called “visiting care for persons with severe disabilities.” This service is closest to the “personal assistance” mentioned in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, it is not part of the elderly care insurance system. From the perspective of the disability rights independent living movement, the elderly care insurance system has enormous restrictions, including a cap on the amount and time of use, severe restrictions on the content of use, and the charging of fees. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare （MHLW） has repeatedly attempted to bring services and support system for persons with disabilities closer to the elderly care insurance system. However, each time, the disability rights independent living movement has been engaged in a fierce administrative struggle. This report intends to inform the readers about the shortcomings of the elderly care insurance system, from the viewpoint of the disability rights independent living movement and the history and features of the struggle behind the movement which leads to the present state.

Using the concepts of “adjusting overlaps” and “adjusting supplements” in the theory of inter-institutional coordination, this study critically examined the relationship between the current public long-term care insurance system and the welfare system for persons with disabilities. First, prioritizing public long-term care insurance as adjusting overlaps in the two systems is irrational. This can be indicated by comparing and analyzing two cases related to the prioritization of public long-term care insurance. In addition, it is argued that the satisfaction of care assurance and welfare needs for people with disabilities aged≥65 placed between the “blind spot” of the two systems will be achieved by adjusting supplements.

This paper examines the influence of pressure groups on non-regular employment labor policy through an analysis of pressure groups, mainly the Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations （Nikkeiren）, and proposals and requests to the government and ministries by government committees and councils during the deregulation of the external labor market deregulation in the late 1990s. We also focused on the impact of Nikkeiren’s “Japanese-style Management in the New Era” on labor policy. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows. There are many studies that criticize the “Japanese Management in the New Era” by Nikkeiren as the “trigger” for the deregulation of the external labor market, but the “Japanese Management in the New Era” is a summary of the way of human resource management that already existed within Nikkeiren and its member companies. Deregulation was already on the agenda when the report was published. Also, through the analysis of this paper, we could not confirm that the document had a significant impact on labor policy, and it became clear that the criticisms made earlier overestimated the influence of the document on the labor policy-making process.

This study conducts interview surveys with the support staffs planning and operating long-term programs as a public measure for supporting youth and the youth who participate in the long-term program. Thus this study elucidates how the youth can satisfy their “expressiveness” and “instrumentality” in the program. This study focuses on an optional business entitled “Intensive Training Program Project for Unemployed Youth” under the Regional Youth Support Station Project.

The results reveal that the support staffs and each support activity of the long-term program provided both of “expressive support” and “instrumental support”, and that the students satisfied their own “expressiveness” and “instrumentality” during the long-term program.

In summary, this study presents two points of consideration. First, in analyzing support activities for youth that can provide great significance, elucidating the multidimensional intentions that the support staffs invest into each support activity is necessary. Second, identifying the elements and foundations indispensable to meaningful youth-support activities and re-questioning the effectiveness of public measures for supporting youth are possible by accumulating studies that examine the subjective perception of youth.

In the Japanese employment system, a person’s compensation scheme is determined, not by that person’s current work, but according to an implicitly expected course of future gender roles. This system is the major reason for persistence of the gender gap in the Japanese labor market. This paper investigates when and how this system emerged, focusing on the legislative process of the Factory Law. Previous research suggests that the Factory Law introduced a division by gender into the labor market and marginalized women, enforcing different working conditions for men and women. Based on this view, the paper argues that 1） “future roles” for women were defined based on biological differences, 2） expected “future roles as mothers” justified discriminatory treatments for women, 3） These roles have been passed down to the present day and have become gender biases embedded in the labor market system.

This study explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the exit patterns of service organizations participating in the Long-Term Care Insurance （LTCI） system in Japan. The outcomes indicate that the exit rate did not increase in the current pandemic compared to surveys conducted before the pandemic. The outcomes also suggest the government’s effective interventions to support the service organizations during this time. The service organizations seem to be learning from the experience that, although LTCI functions as part of the governmental system and is designed as such that they are limited to earn only small margins, they can also enjoy stable revenues with governmental support in a volatile period, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is predicted that the experience will promote participations of large-sized organizations from both within and outside Japan, and they will establish chain systems by repeating merger and/or acquisition （M&A） of existing small- to medium-sized service organizations. It will result in a polarization of the service organizations participating in LTCI : large-sized organizations providing services through the chain systems based on a thin-profit-and-high-sales model, and the rest consisting of independent organizations which are likely to suffer from disadvantaged competition with those large-sized organizations.