Japan Confronts the Aging Society

FAIN: FO-50004-05

John C. Campbell
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1015)

I propose to study old-age policy making, and policy, in Japan. The project will include an account of major policy changes from 1990 until now, concentrating on the initiation and implementation of the public, mandatory long-term-care insurance (LTCI) system that started in 2000; and an analysis of at least two reform processes that will be underway while I am in Japan. These are comprehensive pension reform, perhaps even including integration (already getting underway), and the scheduled 5th-year LTCI review (to be drafted in 2005 for implementation in 2006). The product will be a book that explains what the Japanese government has done about the aging-society problem, and how and why it did it. The first part of the book, perhaps 80-100 pages, will be an account of old-age policy from the mid-1950s until 1990, as summarized from my book of several years ago. This will be followed by four or five chapters based on the research proposed here. The book is intended for readers interested in Japanese politics, comparative welfare states, or policy for the elderly.