This study analyzes the career history of staff members at the Japan Productivity Center, an organization that had a significant influence on labor-management relations in Japan. Analyzing the productivity movement will further provide insights into the reasons for Japan’s rapid economic growth in the postwar period. The study investigates the development of Japanese labor-management relations, which have been described as mutually trusting, with the productivity movement being analyzed using written and oral historical sources. First, the study confirms the impact of the measures for productivity improvement on labor-management relations. These measures included : 1） introduction of a labor-management consultation system, 2） promotion of communication among trade union leaders through inspection teams and committees, and 3） introduction of broad education for everyone from executives to the youth. Next, this study explores the backgrounds and ideas of the staff members who supported these activities. These staff members are classified into three types for analysis. Describing the productivity movement from the history of the three personnel types reveals the following aspects : nationalism, social movements, and modern rationalism. While the three ideologies were inter-related, the aspect of a “national movement” disappeared after the mid-1970s.

UA Zensen is the largest industrial trade union in Japan and has been continuously expanding its organization. This paper focuses on individual organizers who have actually achieved significant results in organizational expansion at Zensen （predecessor of UA Zensen）, and analyzes how they were trained and what kind of thinking and behavior patterns they had, using their oral histories. The findings are as follows. First, the organizer training system （on-the-job training） in Zensen was gradually developed around 1965-75. Second, the three organizers analyzed were professional and worked hard to expand the organization, and were proud of being labor activists even if their working conditions were not good. Third, the pressure to expand the organization was strong at Sensen, and their first priority was to achieve results in organizational expansion. Fourth, however, they often took the method of persuading management to form labor unions, which was possible because Zensen was feared by management.

In the history of labor movement in the steel industry, there are a couple of leaders who were involved in long period and gave strong influences on its trajectories. On the other hand, there are people who took a leader role in only limited period but left a deep footprint. The latter type of leaders has not been talked about much and has been focused on little in historical writings. In this paper, the author tries to uncover how two of those labor leaders without fame, Kanae Harada and Kazuyoshi Isoda, acted. By doing so, the paper brings about some insights on the formation of post-WWII labor movement in Japan. Particularly, paying special attention to the fact that white collar employees played a critical role in the early stage of the movement, the paper examines the activities of Harada and Isoda, both of whom have white collar backgrounds.

Since 2000, nursing care services specified by the Act on Social Welfare for the Elderly, except for a few services, have shifted to long-term care insurance services specified by the Long-term Care Insurance Act. However, the Long-term Care Insurance Act is based on the Act on Social Welfare for the Elderly. The Long-term Care Insurance System is a social insurance system, and several welfare measures for the elderly were implemented when it was established. This paper clarifies the relationship between the Act on Social Welfare for the Elderly and the Long-term Care Insurance Act and incorporates findings from previous studies by other researchers.

This paper had two aims. The first was to use various surveys to obtain a basic overview of nursing homes for the elderly, little of which about is known. The second was to ascertain the shift in policy and the current status of nursing homes for the elderly and to incorporate findings from previous studies by other researchers. Through this work, this paper highlights the current status of nursing homes for the elderly.

This study elucidates the changing content of the long-term care insurance system through a series of legal amendments since the system was introduced while describing its current state. The study examines how the long-term care insurance system has affected the elderly and social welfare policy and its related challenges. The findings elicit two conclusions. First, with each successive system revision, preventive care, family care, and daily life support have been incorporated into the long-term care insurance system for older adults. Previously, these services had been provided outside of this system. The scope of the long-term care insurance system has expanded from persons needing support and care to independent older adults, their families, and community residents. Second, the maintenance of nursing-care infrastructure has been integrated with the long-term care insurance system, as evident in the establishment of community comprehensive support centers and projects regarding lifestyle support systems.

This study aims to clarify the welfare mix of home care services in metropolitan Korea by examining how the institutional environment associated with marketization affects the behavior of for-profit and non-profit providers, and by examining the relationships between providers and between the government and providers. An interview survey was conducted with the managers of 11 home care service providers （home-visit care and day care） in municipality B in Seoul. The data analysis demonstrated that in the institutional environment associated with the marketization of home care services in Korea, an increase in the number of for-profit providers, primarily individual business owners, has led to competition among providers to secure service users. Marketization is also progressing. This trend is especially pronounced in home-visit care, where marketization is higher. For daycare services, the social welfare corporations of religious organizations that have operated welfare centers have played a central role since the early stages of the system, and cooperative relationships between providers have been observed. The results revealed varying institutional environment influences depending on the type of service.

This paper investigates employment insurance for women who undergo job changes and examines the disparities in accessibility and freedom of choice in employment insurance using data from The Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers. First, women who received employment insurance when transitioning between jobs were analyzed. Subsequently, the paper investigates why some women did not receive employment insurance despite being qualified. Findings reveal that approximately 70％ of women were eligible for employment insurance, but only approximately 20％ received it when they changed jobs. In addition, many women tend to find new jobs instead of receiving employment insurance to deal with job loss. Furthermore, women who received employment insurance maintained their living not only receiving it but also relying on savings or forms of support from their family. Moreover, logistic regression analysis identified that women who have children or live with parents are less likely to receive employment insurance and that women who worked as regular employees in previous jobs are associated with higher employment insurance, regardless of whether they are eligible. This paper indicates that it is important to establish systems that are suitable for people who are not autonomous in the labor market.

This study aims to clarify the relationship between child poverty and abuse, using the “intergenerational chain of family stress model” as a framework. The analysis is based on individual data from the 2021 National Survey of Lifestyles and Attitudes, which surveyed 20,000 men and women aged 20-69 residing in Japan. The analysis revealed that parents’ childhood experience of poverty positively influences the likelihood of directing physical abuse toward their children, mediated by the parents’ childhood experience of neglect and current poverty, partially supporting the “intergenerational chain of family stress model” mechanism. These results suggest that expanding financial support to low-income households and addressing the “intergenerational chain of family stress model” are key to preventing child maltreatment.

Numerous studies on the material deprivation index have been conducted overseas, and the European Union has adopted it as one of the official poverty indicators. However, in Japan, there has been little progress in developing the material deprivation index for children, and there was no mention of it in the set of indicators listed in the “Kodomo Taiko,” which was approved by the Cabinet at the end of 2023.

This paper reviews the latest developments in the methodology for selecting items to construct material deprivation index. Moreover, it applies a suitability test, one of four tests used to verify the validity of items, to determine the appropriateness of items to represent a low standard of living while utilising a social consensus approach. The data used is from an internet survey conducted in 2022, that gathered 2,000 responses from the general public. The results indicated that 20 necessities for households with children and 15 children’s necessities met the two criteria of this approach. People’s perception of what is necessary for children showed relatively high correlation between different sociodemographic groups.

This study aims to understand the structure of support for government spending on education in Japan under different cost burdens. It identifies the policy priorities people perceive when they face fiscal trade-offs. In the analysis, respondents were randomly assigned different fiscal constraints and asked whether they supported the expansion of education policy. The results indicate that individuals are less supportive of increased spending on education when they face fiscal constraints. Among the different cost-burden conditions, tax increases and spending cuts in other policy areas are less popular than increases in public debt. Furthermore, variations in support based on socio-economic status and demographics become more pronounced when the cost burden is explicit. These findings suggest that social surveys ignoring fiscal constraints may overestimate actual preferences.