Welfare
5 items
The Structure of the Care Worker Crisis — An 'Invisible Roadmap' to 2040
Japan will face a shortage of 570,000 care workers by 2040, according to projections by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. With a job openings-to-applicants ratio of 3.9 and turnover and hiring rates nearly equal, what appears to be a quantitative problem intersects with systemic failures in institutional design. This column examines the crisis through a three-layer structural analysis.
The 'Depth' of Child Poverty — What the Relative Poverty Rate Cannot Tell Us
Japan's child relative poverty rate fell to 11.5% in the 2021 survey. Yet an improving 'rate' does not necessarily mean improving 'depth.' A 44.5% poverty rate among single-parent households, the paradox of the highest employment rate co-existing with the highest poverty rate among OECD nations, and the explosive growth of children's cafeterias all point to forms of deprivation that a single threshold cannot capture.
Public Assistance Take-up Rate at 20% — The Invisible Leakage in Japan's Safety Net
An estimated 20% of those eligible for public assistance in Japan actually receive it. The remaining 80% are unreached by the system. Behind this gap lie three barriers — psychological, procedural, and informational. Compared with Germany's 64% and the UK's 57%, Japan's structural problem comes into sharp relief.
Why AI Adoption Stalls in Nonprofits — Three Structural Barriers and How to Overcome Them
The reasons AI adoption lags in welfare, education, and healthcare nonprofits go beyond a lack of technical capacity. This article analyzes three structural barriers — problem framing, cost, and literacy — drawing on public survey data, and identifies realistic entry points for overcoming them.
The Question Posed by U.S. Welfare Retrenchment — Where Is Institutional Trust Headed?
As the United States advances welfare cuts on a trillion-dollar scale, this article examines the social impact of deep reductions to Medicaid and SNAP, and the structural question of how welfare systems should be redesigned.