The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of income inequality among households with small children in comparative perspective and to explore what kind of family policies for supporting childrearing should be provided in contemporary Japan. The paper consists of two parts. The first section presents empirical analyses on the economic conditions of households with small children in industrial nations. The countries which I analyze are the United States, France, Sweden, and Japan. The degree of income inequality among households with small children has greatly increased since the mid-1980s, and a particularly high rate of poverty among single-mother households was found in Japan. Even though many mothers are in the labor force, the poverty rate among Japanese single-mother households is much higher than those in other nations. The high poverty rate in Japan probably comes from the low wages of single mothers. Since the labor force participation rate among Japanese single mothers is high, work alone does not seem to prevent them from sliding into poverty. The second section examines people's attitudes toward childrearing policies in the United States, France, Sweden, South Korea (included only in the attitude survey), and Japan. The types of childrearing-related policies that are considered important by many Japanese people are economic support such as child allowances, diversity in childcare services, and reduction in education expenses. In Japan, people show similar tendencies in attitudes toward childrearing policies regardless of household income. In other countries, however, people's preferences in childrearing policies differ according to the level of household income. Those in low-income households tend to prefer cash allowances, while those in high-income households tend to favor flexible work practices and tax-financed reductions of childrearing costs. The extent of income inequality in Japan is as high as the United States, but people's attitudes are not stratified by their level of economic well-being.

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This article describes child poverty and deprivation in Japan. While it has been reported elsewhere that the economic well-being of children in Japan has declined since the 1980s, this article is one of the first to go into the details of child poverty using concepts of both traditional income-based poverty measures as well as relative deprivation measures that are constructed from 15 items deemed necessary in a child's life. The analysis confirms that the children in single-mother households, households with more than four children, and households with a young parent or young parents have a higher probability of being low-income. Contrary to popular belief, the ages of children did not yield significant differences in terms of poverty rates. The use of relative deprivation to conduct analysis has several advantages compared to the income-based poverty approach. First of all, by measuring the living standards of children directly, it bypasses the problem of difference in "needs" between different households. The equivalization of income takes into account the size of households, but it (usually) does not take into account, say, the difference in consumption needs for a 2-year-old versus an 18-year-old. Second, the income measure assumes that all members of a household have the same level of living standard, but the deprivation measure does not. By setting different items to be counted into the deprivation scale for children and adults, it can measure living standards of children and adults separately. In cases of resource shortage, it is probable that parents maintain the living standards of children while lowering their own living standards. Using deprivation measurements, we can observe such behavior. Third, by using deprivation measurements, we can set up separate poverty thresholds for adults and children. The results of the deprivation analysis of children show trends similar to those of income-based poverty analyses. The children in single-mother households and/or with young parent(s) have, on the average, higher deprivation scores than other children. The "threshold" income below which the deprivation score rises quickly can also be observed at 4 to 5 million yen (household annual income). Lastly, the deprivation of single mothers is even worse than the deprivation of children in single-mother households, indicating that mothers do away with their own necessities while maintaining the living standards of children.

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This paper examines inequality and conflict in family education through interviews with about 40 Japanese mothers of elementary school students. Since the late 1990s political pressures and social concerns regarding the improvement of education and child-rearing within families have increased greatly in Japan. In contrast with the fact that the main concern of political pressure is the moral socialization of children, social concerns have focused on the success of children in educational competition. There are worries, however, that this emphasis on family education might widen the inequalities among experiences of children and aggravate the problems of mothers regarding both the incompatibility of work and child-rearing and the difficulties in choosing the best way of family education. Interviews with about 40 mothers regarding their daily practices of and perspectives on family education affirmed this anxiety. What is needed is not to lay stress on family education, but to enrich the public opportunities for children to develop their abilities and possibilities.

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This paper shows that family friendly policymaking combined with equal opportunity has resulted in positive effects, including improvements in financial performance, and that the positive relationship of the so-called "win-win" approach will probably be seen in Japan as well. In addition, various perception gaps have been found among companies (personnel managers), managers, and staff members. Such gaps are larger than expected, especially in terms of awareness of policies and programs, appraisal methods and the ideas on promotion associated with childcare leave. This suggests that using legislation to force companies to introduce work-life balance (WLB) policies and programs will not help to solve the issues. The companies for which survey data are used in this paper are considered relatively advanced in Japan with respect to family friendliness and WLB. Even in these companies, however, there exist large gaps. It is, therefore, necessary to promote family friendliness and equal opportunity based on the assumption that these gaps do exist. The points made above are confirmed with matching data. I expect that this kind of research and study will be conducted on a continuous basis in the future. Lastly, I would like to discuss ways to implement and promote family friendliness. It is important to discuss the matter at workplaces, using "discussion bases" such as labor unions, labor-management meetings and similar forums, not only to introduce the programs but also to let all concerned people know and understand the issues. Specific discussion materials (themes and points) are in such WLB indices as briefly introduced in this paper. First, workers who know where weak points are in a relevant workplace, and who know their workplaces very well, can discuss and determine how to overcome the weak points with managers and other workers. For example, if an employee wishes (or is supposed to wish) to take childcare leave, what should be done is just to try to obtain agreement on the method of reviewing job assignments and the salary and promotion of the leave-taker. If this was merely an uncompensated company cost entailing no profits, only a few people would be serious about discussing the matter. However, since the "win-win" relationship, which enhances company profitability, is made clear, the effort will never be fruitless but will promote the development of the company.

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This article argues that pension developments and reforms in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have been largely influenced by different national business structures and business influences. While labour power in these states has been particularly weak compared to western countries, the interaction between business and state/political sphere offers the key explanation for developments in pension systems. Before the 1990s, the development of occupational retirement benefits and the preference for funded social insurance pensions in Japan and South Korea, in contrast to Taiwan, are well explained by the export-oriented and conglomerate-oriented business structures. Since around 1990, increased business influence has been found in the consecutive retrenchment pension reforms and reforms of corporate pension schemes in Japan and South Korea. Also, different business structures and power provide the explanation for the different trajectories in Korean and Taiwanese pension development in recent years despite their similar political institutions and experiences. Finally, this paper suggests that further research on East Asian welfare regimes should pay more attention to business influences.

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As we understand the history of the health security system in the United States, the foundation is laid on "voluntary" employment-based employee/retirement health benefit plans. Thus, the core of the American model of health security system has been employer-sponsored health insurance. I consider why and how employer-sponsored health insurance has developed from the 1940s onward, what each party - business (as employers), labor unions and federal government-has thought about health insurance, and why and how each of them has encouraged the development of employer-sponsored health insurance. Through this historical examination, I can approach the structural problem of the American model of health security, which has become more obvious and more acute. In the 1940s, when national mandatory health insurance programs were under deliberation in Congress, particularly after World War II, employers and labor unions were more interested in "voluntary" employment-based health insurance. Actually, from the 1940s, employers gradually began to provide health insurance for their employees (and employees' family members and retirees) because labor unions possessed much greater power than before. In other words, employers sponsored employee health insurance plans to recruit and retain good workers and increase employees' loyalty to the company, while they had to respond to or obstruct union organizing drives. Labor unions expressed their support for national health insurance programs, while thinking that securing and reinforcing employer-sponsored health insurance by collective bargaining was more important. After World War II, employer-sponsored health insurance was expected to be an alternative for national health insurance program controlled by the government, and it actually has been carrying out that function to some extent. However, that system constantly needs a safety net. That is, an employer-sponsored health insurance system, which has been developed through collective bargaining, has not covered the elderly, the unemployed, and the poor. Employer-sponsored health insurance is a part of an employee's compensation, and has been given a meaning of "social insurance" by preferential tax measures. But since there are more companies that don't provide health benefits plans or contribute enough, and there are more unstable jobs, employer-sponsored health insurance can no longer substitute for social insurance. The American model of health security needs reform.

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In the 1960s, the Japanese government and bureaucracy sought to introduce a child benefit program funded by both employees' and employers' contributions, while rejecting an alternate plan to fund children's benefits from general revenues. The plan to introduce employees' contributions, which was blocked by strong opposition from labor, has now been redesigned as a plan to introduce "social insurance for dependent children." This development shows that the importance of non-means-tested and noncontributory cash benefits has been often ignored in discussions on social policy in Japan. Bunji KONDO, an influential researcher of social policy, classified such noncontributory cash benefits in a category close to public assistance and argued that a form of social insurance based on employees' contributions as well as those of employers that benefited workers most. Furthermore, he considered that even child benefits were similar to such forms of insurance, before World War II and in the postwar days up to the 1960's. I would like to point that KONDO's discussions are among the backdrops of the recent odd proposal to replace the current child benefit with "social insurance for dependent children" for which there is no precedent elsewhere in the world. On the other hand, the labor movement in the 1960s did not launch strong campaigns for child benefit programs based only on general revenues. It is not only because it seemed impossible then, but also because labor tended to support benefits based on employers' unilateral contributions. At that time, benefits based on such contributions were regarded as more advantageous for workers, as they channeled portions of profits into worker incomes. However, in other countries, it has been recognized that child benefit programs based on employer contributions have an effect only on horizontal income re-distribution, while child benefit programs funded only by general revenues affect both vertical and horizontal income re-distribution. It is also argued that the former tends to function more strongly to lower wages than the latter. I argue that the Japanese labor movement should reconsider its preference for child benefit programs based on employer contributions, recognizing their gender-biased character and vulnerability to cost-cutting pressures from employers and big business.

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This paper analyzes public attitudes toward welfare reform enacted under the Clinton administration using survey data and, through this analysis, re-examines the validity of the 'self-interest' hypothesis, which is an accepted theory among welfare state scholars. Clinton's welfare reform, known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), abolished the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and transformed it into the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which is a block grant to state governments. PRWORA obligated the recipients of AFDC or TANF to engage in work or job training that a state government stipulates and restricted the qualification period for benefits to a total of five years over a person's lifetime. Previous studies do not sufficiently explain the public attitudes toward this welfare reform. Welfare state theories account for welfare backlashes in liberal welfare regimes based on the 'self-interest' of constituents: while universal or social insurance programs can effectively resist welfare retrenchment because these programs benefit middle-class citizens, residual welfare programs are more easily cut because they are not beneficial to median voters. This theory is rarely supported, however, with empirical micro level evidence. On the other hand, while public opinion studies have accumulated analyses of public attitudes toward welfare, they have not yet tackled the issue of public opinion on welfare reform at the individual level. This paper fills this gap in the literature by exploring the factors that drove citizens to choose whether to support the welfare reform, using the American National Election Studies 1994 Data Set. The result of multivariate regression analysis endorses the self-interest hypothesis to some extent. It reveals that the income level of respondents is highly correlated with the degree of support for the welfare reform: in other words, the higher a respondent's income, the more strongly s/he supports it. This suggests that the self-interest of respondents explains public attitudes towards welfare. However, the result also indicates that the ideological variables of economic conservatism, social conservatism, distrust in government, and symbolic racism explain a large part of the variance of the dependent variable even when the socioeconomic variables are controlled. This suggests that idiosyncratic factors in the U.S. such as Puritanism and racism strongly have affected public attitudes toward welfare reform. We should therefore be cautious about generalizing the self-interest hypothesis over other countries with the case of welfare reform in the U.S.

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The Industrial Welfare Society (Sangyo-Fukuri Kyokai), founded in November 1925 and dissolved in March 1936, was an organization which aimed to promote the welfare of factory workers by taking measures to prevent occupational disasters and labor disputes. The Society began as an extra-departmental body of the Home Ministry and, after changing into a juridical foundation in February 1929, continued until it was incorporated into the Harmonization Society (Kyocho-Kai) in April 1936. This paper examines the relationship between the capital-labor cooperation and occupational safety during the prewar period by investigating how the Industrial Welfare Society performed in various areas involving personnel, finance, projects, and philosophy. First, the paper will argue that during this decade the Society was under the control of the Home Ministry's Social Affairs Bureau (Shakai-kyoku), and that, during this time, it was embarrassed by financial difficulties which were growing more and more serious due to the Society's dependence on membership fees which were not stable and not constantly increasing. In April 1936, the Industrial Welfare Society was merged with the Harmonization Society, and the former continued as the Department of Industrial Welfare of the latter. Second, this article maintains that while the Industrial Welfare Society tried to overcome its financial difficulties, the Harmonization Society branched out into new projects of industrial welfare and, as a result, the merger brought their interests together. Kawarada Kakichi (1886-1955), former chief director of the Industrial Welfare Society and managing director of the Harmonization Society, along with Gamo Toshibumi (1883-1966), activist of the Safety Campaign, both played prominent roles not only in the realization of the merger of 1936, but also in the activities of the Industrial Welfare Society. The Industrial Welfare Society had a profound effect on the Harmonization Society, not only in the sense that it caused the latter to make a policy about-face in 1936, but also in the sense that it led the Harmonization Society to emulate its philosophy. This was the philosophy that Kawarada shared with Gamo. In conclusion, the Industrial Welfare Society existed for the purpose of preventing labor disputes and occupational disasters. The Society tried to turn factories into arenas of social welfare for the factory workers, on the understanding that occupational safety is necessary for cooperation between capital and labor.

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This paper examines and compares the structure of disability pensions in the United States and Sweden. Based on this analysis, the paper then analyzes the current status of disability pensions in Japan. The following four viewpoints are adopted throughout the paper: (1) disability evaluation, (2) employment support, (3) the relationship between disability pensions and old-age pensions, and (4) methods for procuring financial resources. The following are the conclusions and suggestions based on an analysis of disability pensions in the United States, Sweden and Japan. Regarding disability evaluation, in the United States and Sweden disability is assessed mainly based on the decline in income-earning ability, whereas in Japan the assessment is made primarily according to the levels of functional deficit. Several problems arise out of Japan's system of assessment. This may suggest that Japan's current system of disability evaluation needs to be reexamined. Regarding employment support, the United States adopts the Ticket to Work program mainly in order to control costs, and urges disability pension recipients to utilize vocational rehabilitation services. Sweden values job assistance for disability pension recipients, and provides assistance for recipients to be engaged in social activities, especially from the viewpoint of social inclusion. Japan, following the latter viewpoint, needs to build a framework that encourages disability pension recipients to participate in social activities and the labor market. This framework also needs to be combined with income security. Regarding the relationship between disability pensions and old-age pensions, disability pensions have been separated from old-age pensions in Sweden due to pension reforms in recent years. Japan will also face greater difficulties in dealing with these two types of pensions under a single system if it attempts to strengthen the corresponding relations between contributions and benefits of public pensions. Furthermore, the increasing expansion of the differences between aging and the risks of becoming disabled undermines the rationale of having these two pensions under a single system. In addition, as is discussed in the United States, if the standard of disability pension benefits is reduced at the same rate as that of old-age pension benefits, disability pension recipients will be more adversely affected. Therefore, the management of two different pensions under a single system may require reconsideration. Finally, although Japan's disability pensions system is managed under a social insurance method, most of the recipients receive noncontributory pensions. Moreover, social insurance premiums are used as part of the financial resources of the noncontributory pension, and this makes disability pension system extremely obscure. In the United States and Sweden, however, when social insurance systems cannot in principle deal with persons who have no or insufficient contribution records, a tax-funded scheme such as public assistance (United States) or minimum guaranteed benefit (Sweden) is uniformly utilized. There is also scope to consider this type of clear division of financial resources in Japan.

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It is well known that the number of non-regular workers has been increasing greatly and the range of their tasks has been also expanding; however, non-regular workers' wage levels are still lower than those of regular workers. Moreover, wage differentials between regular workers and non-regular workers, if anything, have been extending. Thus, the question is if we focus on wage differentials between regular workers and non-regular workers who are engaged in similar jobs, what degree of wage differential between the two is there, and how much did wage differentials change during the 1990's? This paper attempts to clarify these two points, based on A Co-op's case, by examining (1) regular workers' and part-timers' wage payment systems, (2) the relationship between their function grades, and (3) data regarding their actual wages. Following is the summary of the results. The hourly wages of part-timers whose range of work overlaps that of regular workers changed within the range of 1,140 yen to 1,585 yen during the 1990's. Meanwhile, hourly pay of regular workers, calculated from their monthly salary, fluctuated in the 2,350-yen to 2,450-yen range. The wage ratio of part-timers against regular workers was 0.669 in 1995. The ratio decreased to 0.64 in 2000. My calculation shows that the difference was about 776 yen in 1995, and that it expanded to 876 yen in 2000. On the whole, in the 1990's, when part-timers' range of tasks overlapped those of regular workers, wage differentials between regular workers and part-timers widened. This tendency was confirmed when we examined differentials by calculating and comparing part-timers' and regular workers' annual incomes.

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This paper focuses on the developing process of the women's labor movement (litigation battle) and the internalization problem of gender consideration by analyzing "the case of Nomura Securities" which was settled in October 2004. In this case of Nomura Securities, the problem of promotion and wage discrimination against female employees was handled in court. Such litigation battles have taken place frequently. In this case, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was considered as an issue by the Social Responsibility Investment (SRI) institution of the Global Ethical Standard Investment Services (GES). Therefore, I focus on the period before the case was settled through reconciliation. I analyze the dynamism in the interaction process on the women's labor issue, and the strategy, e. g. the gap of the definition of the situation, the compromise/ joint, which was formed by the various actors, the exercise group, Nomura Securities group, and the Social Responsibility Investment institution of the Global Ethical Standard Investment Services. I point out some possible strategies on gender equality inspired by the case of Nomura Securities, and present future considerations. In the examination in this paper, each actor's logic regarding the women's labor issue showed an independent structure: "Discrimination," "Distinction" and "Social Responsibility." As a result, however, it clarified the structure in which "Social Responsibility" subsumed the other two logics. It is necessary to let the definitional gap on the relationship between discrimination and distinction converge as Corporate Social Responsibility. In another words, the controversy over the "wrongfulness of discrimination" and the "legitimacy of distinction" tends to generate longtime conflict by following a parallel course to the case of Nomura Securities. It is Corporate Social Responsibility that carries out the function of bridging this gap and becomes a practical way to compromise, and can also help to link gender considerations to corporate personnel management policies. Under current global norms, human rights violations generate negative effects on corporate value and financial flows as CSR, and gender equality strategies are moving to the forefront of corporate concerns.

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