Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the future of the public assistance system in Japan by focusing on recent debates about its reform through the lens of political discourse analysis and to discuss the potential of an unconditional basic income (BI).1 The first section offers a general overview of recent welfare reforms aimed at promoting workfare using a few examples from the United States that have inspired the Japanese policies. In the second section, I outline and describe attempts at public assistance reforms in Japan and analyze the recent debates about these proposals at the national level. In the third section, I examine proposals for public assistance reform by prefectural or municipal governments, especially a proposal by the mayor of Osaka City, in the context of the devolution of public assistance administration. In the conclusion, I argue that future public assistance reform in Japan will likely be based on workfare; however, I suggest that the government must increase the take-up rate to twice or three times its present level in order to guarantee the right to subsistence.
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© 2014 Yannick Vanderborght and Toru Yamamori
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Kobayashi, H. (2014). The Future of the Public Assistance Reform in Japan: Workfare versus Basic Income?. In: Vanderborght, Y., Yamamori, T. (eds) Basic Income in Japan. Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137348081_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137348081_6
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