General Sessions（abstract）,JASPS 131th Biannual Conference
１．Long Term Care
１．Carers policy in France
Kiyoshi MITOMI（University of Shizuoka）
There have been many comparative studies done on policies to support carers of France and theviews in those studies vary. One of the issues frequently discussed is when the policy to support
carers have started. Also, the characteristic of policy in France is one of the important issues to be
discussed.
This paper gives critical analysis on six comparative studies, and clarifies the launch of the policyby tracing back to the Laroque plan in 1962. Moreover, it clarifies the differences and similarities
between policies of France and UK through the analysis on 23 indicators.
２．Public Duty in Pluralizing Community Care
Jun NISHIMURA（Hokkaido University）
It is a key issue of community care for the elderly to provide user-centered and effective services in
the community. For this purpose

plural health and social services are required to collaborate andplural bodies have been involved in the service provision such as profitable and non-profitableorganizations. The contract system between service users and providers has also been introduced. In
this situation, where can we find the public duty to provide appropriate care? This paper comparescommunity care policies and systems between England and Japan in reference to the field surveys
and the legal concepts of “target duty” and “commissioning”, and investigates the conditions andvisions to fulfill the public duty by financing, regulating, quality assurance, strategic planning,
safeguarding and information.
３．Culture and Policy Learning: Applicability of discourse based analysis on eldercare policy
Masaya SHIMMEI（Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology）
Policy learning is a prevalent method to alter or maintain a direction of either controversial orsignificant policy agenda. Although policy concepts and policy terms learnt by this process resemble,
influences on concerned policy areas derived from cultural differences are largely regarded as given
or marginal. Generally speaking, implementation and outcomes of ‘superficially resemblinginstitutions’ developed by such learned policy largely differs, the process of the policy learning whichreflects cultural differences at national or regional level is not a negligible factor for explaining suchdifferences. In recent years, comparative welfare state analyses have shed a light on analysis ofcultural differences, aside from their institutional and social mobilisation approach. The aim of thisreport is to examine the possible application of adapting hermeneutic approaches reflecting cultural
aspect, namely discourse-based and narrative approaches in an area of the eldercare policy.
２．Social Inclusion
１．Job Assistance and Homeworking for Single Mothers in Japan
Tsuyoshi TAKANO（Ritsumeikan University）
Lately, for poor people who are able to work, a system of independence support using homeworking
for those in employment difficulties has been implemented. Included among these people are thosewith disabilities and single mothers who cannot work outside their homes. This report will
investigate the situation of job assistance for homeworking single mothers by focusing specifically on
actual case studies to clarify the problems within the system. The writer focuses, in particular, on theactivities of single mothers and elderly people as well as discussing disabilities in persons fallingunder the category of “people with employment difficulties due to obstacles resulting from social
circumstances” according to the Ordinance for Enforcement Unemployment Insurance Act Article 32.

２．Strategy for Introduction and Standardization of New Social Service Model: The Case of
Employment Support Service for People with Disabilities in UK
Ritsu YAMAMURA（Nihon University）
There are many cases in which existing social services are insufficient to help people in modern
society face various life challenges. However, in the practices of social services, a lot of new supportmodels have been discovered through repeated trials, some have been proven to be effective. In
response to people’s needs, such support models with substantiated efficacy are expected to be
introduced and standardized by the government as social services. Yet, the introduction of suchsupport models is not always successful, and at times models become distorted and lose theireffectiveness due to inadequate institutional structures; there are instances in which practices formaking those models standardized services are not progressively expanded. Even in Japan, we seesome support models that are not progressively turned into standardized social services, despite
their noticeable efficacy, due to various obstacles. Thus, I conducted a study, referencing successful

cases of new support models that were turned into standardized social services, with the goal of
exploring strategies for linking effective support models to institutionalization in Japan, and making
them standardized social services.
３．A Study on the Roles of Community Agency in Logan Square in Chicago
Nobuko NISHINA（Kumamoto Gakuen University）
This study analyzes the roles of the community agency. The American social welfare system isbased on self-support and the basic premise is “Welfare to Work”. Under these circumstances, therole of community agency support increases in its importance.
A certain community agency located in Logan Sq. has been in existence for almost 50 years.

Itssphere of activity is widely established in housing, education, afterschool activities, adult education,legal support for immigrants, and general lobbying and empowerment of people.
Community based service is one of the important factors in the social policies of the post welfare
state. This study analyzes the role of community agency from the social policy point of view.
３．Health Care
１．The Low Social Status of Medical Workers in Russia: The Legacy of the Soviet Healthcare
SystemKaori MATSUMOTO（Kobe International University）
The presentation aims to analyze the healthcare system and the social status of medical workers
in Russia. The contemporary Russian health care system received both a negative and positive
legacy from the former Soviet healthcare system. On the positive side, the former Soviet healthcare
system provided free medical care to all citizens of the USSR (the Semashko model). On the negativeside, it was marked with low quality medical care ("quantity over quality"), inefficiency andcorruption (medical workers often expected or demanded a bribe from patients).
The Soviet inheritance still holds back the development of the contemporary Russian healthcare
system today, which suffers from the shortage of qualified personnel, the lack of medical units andoutdated medical technology. One distinguishing feature of the contemporary Russian healthcare
system is that medical profession has low (or no) social prestige. In contrast to most developed
capitalist countries where the title "doctor" implies high income and high social status, medical
workers in Russia have low status, low salary and poor benefits. It results in a vicious cycle: the "lowstatus" image holds back talented young people from going into a medical profession while the lack ofoutstanding human resources perpetuates the "low quality" image of medical care.

In November, 2014 the Moscow City government proposed a healthcare system reform plan which
gained little public support

despite the government's promises to solve present problems andimprove overall healthcare quality in Moscow City.
The present paper will discuss the variety of problems in the contemporary Russian healthcare
system, including education and training of medical workers, medical workers' working conditions,payment and benefits, the current situation of hospitals and healthcare units in Russia, and others.
It will analyze the impact of the above problems on the social status of medical workers incontemporary Russia and how these factors hinder the development of the Russian healthcare
system today.
２．Medical accessibility in Sweden
Kayo FUKAMI（Kyoto university）
Swedish medical system is well known for its universality that doesn’t have strong hurdle forlow-income people. However on the other hand it is also mentioned that inefficiency of the system is
an issue which includes long waiting time for medical care which applies to everyone. Unfortunately
we do not have enough studies regarding

both of these issues, universality and waiting time inJapan. Therefore sometimes it instigates discussions about “Universality verses Inefficiency”.
Those social issues are discussed in terms of “accessibility for medical care”. This report studies
medical accessibility in Sweden based on a theory of Busse.
It will show that the problem is not about “Universality or Inefficiency” but of legitimacy of welfare
state.
３．Healthcare System Reform that Focuses on Prevention: Initiatives in France and Germany
Yumi MATSUMOTO（Kumamoto University）
With healthcare costs expected to rise due to Japan’s aging population, improving thesustainability of the healthcare system has become a major policy issue. Measures to deal with thisat the most basic level include preventing people from getting sick in the first place, preventing thedeterioration of diseases, and detecting illnesses early on so as to provide suitable care at earlier
stages. Given reform trends in France and Germany, both of which face the same kind of issues,

wecan see that policy initiatives regarding preventative care and health promotion have beenstrengthened in recent years, and that importance on prevention has increased in their healthcare
systems.
Since the early 2000’s in France, preventive measures in medical service coverage have been
reinforced, and its 2009 reform law positioned “prevention” as a national priority. In Germany, a law

with comprehensive policies to promote health and strengthen preventive measures was presented
to the Federal Diet and is now in deliberation. This paper examines policies related to prevention inboth countries, using a comparative approach to examine trends in reform.
４．Social Welfare
１．The Origin of Work and Life Balance Policy in Japan-Focusing on Masakichi Ando
Tsugumi OSHIRO （Osaka City University）
This paper focuses on ways of balancing work and lifestyle in order to achieve better living
standards in contemporary society. To grasp the origins of this issue, it is important to conduct a
historical survey on the debates of work and life balance. We examine the historical background inwhich the ideologies and theories of work-life balance developed in Japan.
We pay special attention to the experiences of Masakichi Ando in order to find out the origin of
work-life balance issues. In the 1930s and 1940s, Ando devoted himself to devising a scientificapproach for determining a minimum living wage standard for different nations. He also conductedinvestigations of other items related to work and living conditions, including working hours, housing,nutrition, and so on. In addition, he played a very important role in establishing new lifestyles inmodern Japan.
２．Child Care Reform and Public Responsibility
KumikoHagiwara（Shimonoseki City University）

A new comprehensive support system for children and childrearing was launched in April, 2015.
During deliberations leading up to its adoption, it was pointed out that the new system does notclearly ensure that municipal governments will provide adequate care to families and as theprevious system did. In the newly adopted system, municipal governments are only responsible forproviding child care at nursery schools established under the Child Welfare Act but not
newly-introduced facilities such as early childhood education centers, etc. Also, in an earlier draft of
the new law, policy makers eliminated Clause 24 of the Child Welfare Act stipulating the obligationsof municipal governments. However, this was reversed after receiving strong opposition from parents,
experts and from the municipal governments.
The aim of the presentation is to explore the relationship between obligatory provision of child careby municipal governments and the policy response to natural disasters in terms of resilient
community infrastructure. How did policy responses differ between the Great East Japan
Earthquake in 2011, when the new child care support system was being discussed, and the GreatHanshin Earthquake in 1997, when deregulation and the public responsibility for child care were notbeing discussed? What changes have occurred in terms of actual care provision by local governments
during the disaster recovery process under the new system of the child care? I attempt to answer thequestions above and to describe changes in public responsibility in the implementation of the new
system based on fieldwork in Northern Fukushima.
３． The Functioning and Problems Related to Free Space （Ibasho） for People with Developmental
Disabilities
Satoshi OTAYA（University of Tokyo Nihon）
Free space (Ibasho) has come to be utilized as a means to facilitate building of interpersonal
relationships as transition support for people who are experiencing difficulty in workplaces.
Although people with developmental disabilities, marginalized from work and welfare, facedifficulties in interpersonal relationships, the conditions of free space have not been improved, andthus fails to provide the required support.
This research studies youth support facilities that absorb people with developmental disabilities
and a free space of self-help groups of people with developmental disabilities. We conductedinterviews to find out about underlying philosophy of free spaces and users' opinions about it.
Through a comparative study of the two entities, we aim to find out how free spaces currently
function and the issues they encounters.
５．Employment Relations Industrial Relations
１．U.S. Labor Unions and the Guest Worker Program: The Conflicting Views on Immigration
Reform Bills in the Mid-2000s
Jo NAKAJIMA（Chiba University of Commerce）
This paper studies the division among the labor movement on the Guest Worker Program (GWP)
which was a central issue of U.S. immigration reform in the mid-2000s. AFL-CIO, a national
federation, stood against and criticized the GWP, although they initially endorsed the GWP undercertain conditions. On the other hand, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Union of
Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees-Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees
International Union (UNITE-HERE), which actively sought to organize immigrant workers since the1980s, strongly supported the GWP as a critical element of immigration reform. Thus, there were
two conflicting views toward the GWP, largely because this program was originally demanded by thebusiness community who wanted legal and steady source of foreign workers. Few studies thus far

have considered what this division among labor unions meant. This study explores the details of thisconflict focusing on their arguments and the transition of their policies since 2003. This paper willshow that both sides shared a common basis on some of the requirements they demanded for the
GWP, such as legal protection and paths to citizenship for undocumented immigrant workers,
however they were divided on immigration reform bills which led to the conflict.
２．Employment and Labor Policy Reform by the Abe Government in Japan
Eiji KYOTANI（Nagano University）
The current Japanese government, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is reforming employment andlabor policy drastically. I will analyze the following aspects of this reform. First, the deregulation of
employment protection, which is required for transferring workers from the matured to thedeveloping industries. Secondly, the introduction of “white collar exemption,” which will abolish theovertime payment for the workers earning annual salary 10,750,000 yen and over. Thirdly, thederegulation of dispatched labor law, which will allow corporations to utilize all dispatched workers
without any limited term, whereas all the dispatched labor business firms are required thepermission by the government. Fourthly, the development of diversified working styles. The
government promotes the diversified contracts of regular employees who work for the limited jobs,
for limited hours, or in the limited area. Finally, the propaganda of promoting the usage of female
workers.
I will analyze these aspects of present reforming by comparing the conditions in Japan with thosein other advanced countries, considering the domestic labor market conditions, and also refuting the
researches supporting these reforms.
３．The Actual Circumstances of migration of ethnic Koreans in Korea
LI XUELIAN（Hokkaido University）
Ethnic Koreans is one of the 56 ethnic groups as minorities of China. Mainly live in rural areas of
the Northeast, it is had been farming. Although the Tohoku region was uncultivated land, by ethnic
Koreans who emigrated from the Korean Peninsula, it has been helping in the development of paddy
field work.
However, the reform and opening up in the late 1970s, people's communes were dismantled, moved
from rural to urban has been progress gradually. Furthermore since the Korean diplomatic relations
started in 1992, numerous ethnic Koreans is a U-turn to South Korea.
Currently, the ethnic Koreans that are staying in Korea is about 60 million people, it is the third of
Koreans population approximately 2 million people in China. These are so-called 3D in Korea (dirty,

dangerous and demanding) seen often get a job. The people have to some extent neutralize the labor
shortage problem of South Korea, but have had various problems in the social.
In this paper, while following the foreign labor policy by the South Korean government, foremployees actual situation in Korea of ethnic Koreans, it is to be considered on the basis of thesurvey results.
６．Social Insurance
１．An Note on Public Pensions and Employment Policy for the Elderly: Focusing on the Employees’
Pension Insurance Law of 1954
Katsunori MIYACHI（Matsuyama Shinonome College）
Income security systems for the elderly have changed significantly in Japan. First, throughrevisions of the Employees' Pension Insurance Law in 1991 and 2000, a gradual pension age hikefrom age 60 to 65 has been implemented. Second, the Employment Policy Law for Older Workers was
also revised in 2006 and again in 2012. As a result, employment opportunities for those in their early
60s were established. Thus, we can see the relationship between the pensionable age and retirement
age in Japan.
The first pension age hike, from age 55 to 60, was implemented in the revision of the Employees'
Pension Insurance Law in 1954. It is said that the 1954 Law was enacted on the assumption that theretirement age would rise from age 55 to 60. This paper focuses on the 1954 Law in order to pursue
the origins of income security systems for the elderly in Japan. We will point out relationships inJapan between public pensions and employment policy for the elderly.
２．Construction process of private enterprise pension fund reform
Jun FUKUDA （Doshisha University）
The employees’ pension fund system, which was established in 1966, was abolished when the AIJ
Investment Advisory Incident occurred in 2012. The employees’ pension fund system was a uniquearrangement, since this fund utilized a private enterprise pension fund to manage public pension
funds. In this report, I use the “Construction process,” established by Hoshiro (2015), to analyze theabandonment of this system. In particular, I use “KH Coder” text mining software to analyze theproceedings of the government meetings after the AIJ incident, revealing new insights into their
discussion of the employees’ pension fund. Moreover, I interpret this case as part of private
enterprise pension fund reform and compare it to the defined benefit corporate pension and defined
contribution pension approaches developed in the early 2000s. Through this analysis, I construct atheory about corporate pension reform, using Welfare Regime as a theoretical foundation.

３．A study on the current issues of the Japanese social security system for high-level humanresources though the analysis of the process of their participation into the social insurance
program――a case study of Chinese workers
Xiling

WANG （Ochanomizu University）

The number of foreign workers in Japan has been increasing, and recovering up to the peak thatwas reached immediately before the Lehman Shock or the East Japan Earthquake, which caused it
to decrease once. According to the statistics published by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,it reached to 787,627 at the end of October, 2014, up about 70,123 (9.8%) from the previous year. As
for the nationality of foreign workers, the number of those whose nationality is China is largest. It is311,831, which accounts for 39.6% of all the foreign workers in Japan. Along with the advance of
globalization, Japanese companies have become more active in hiring foreign workers, and especiallythey are willing to hire foreigners or foreign students studying in Japan who have capability ofunderstanding both the culture of Japan and their native countries.
Under these circumstances, this study aims to examine what is required in Japan where recruiting
high quality foreign workers is expected, through the interview with Chinese workers currently
working for Japanese companies, especially focusing on the process of their participation into thesocial insurance program and on how it differs by marital status.
７．Statistical Analysis in Social Policy
１．Disabilities and Poverty: A Study of Living Standards of Those with Disabilities in Need of Carein Japan
Masato SHIKATA（Kwansei Gakuin University）
Yu MOMOSE（Ryutsu Keizai University）
Atsuhiro YAMADA（Keio University）
We used micro data drown from a nationally representative sample available in Comprehensive
Survey of Living Conditions (CSLC), collected by Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, to examine
the living standards of those people who are in need of care, assistance, or watch-over because of
their disabilities. Our data analysis has led to three sets of findings.
First, we have found disproportionately high poverty rates and low living standards especiallyamongst the middle- and younger-old age groups with disabilities, who require their immediatefamily members provide assistance or watch-over.

Second, we have uncovered several significant correlations between the subjects’ living standards
and various socio-economic factors, including their gender, living arrangements, levels of disability,
labor force participation, educational attainment, and availability of public pension benefits.
Finally, we have uncovered the impact of a restriction of labor force participation of their family
members on their household income, which are caused by their need of assistance or watch-over onbehalf of their disabled family members.
Our findings have led to suggest that more comprehensive policies against poverty may berequired not only for those who need assistance or watch-over but also for their family members, who
seem to suffer from the burden of providing assistance and watch-over.
２．Enhancing effect of improving health on labor productivity‐A panel data study‐
Kazuki KAMIMURA（Toyo University）
Kohei KOMAMURA（Keio University）
In recent years, many companies make every effort to improving employees’ health. If improving
employees’ health not only restrain
increases in healthcare cost but increase labor productivity, improving health have a twofold
significance.
However, in Japan, there are few empirical researches with regard toenhancing effect ofimproving health on labor productivity. Thus in this paper, using Keio Household Panel Survey,
which is a longitudinal household survey, we estimate the impact of improving health on wage,
representative index of labor productivity.
Empirical results are as follows. First, with respect to male full-time workers, there is an empiricalevidence for enhancing effect of improving health on labor productivity. Second, in contrast to malefull-time workers, there is no evidence for such an effect.
Empirical results in this paper imply improving employees’ health have a twofold significancealthough such an argument is not applicable for every employees.
３．Social inclusion and happinessYoshiaki TAKAHASHI（University of Tsukuba）

Social inclusion was developed in a different domain from happiness studies. However, happiness studies
indicate that relatedness is one of key factors to form human happiness. Because finite goal for social inclusion
policy is also that people live happily and does not feel lonely in their society, individual circumstance of social
exclusion may be correlated to their happiness. European Commission conducted special module of subjective
well-being in 2013 EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). The EU-SILC is a data sourcewhen they calculate social inclusion indicators. They may soon examine the relationship between happiness andsocial exclusion. In this circumstance, I examined the relationship by using an online happiness survey of the youth
in Japan. Individual happiness level and most of the indicators were correlated statistically. However, for instance,lack of durables and several housing problems were not correlated statistically. Thus, it is useful to use therelationship with happiness as a criterion to consider social exclusion policy.