Editorial
Social security policy should leave no one behind
A 13-year-old boy poisoned himself with hydrogen sulfide last autumn after leaving a suicide note saying, "I'm tired of living." His father who attempted to save him also died after inhaling the deadly gas. The boy hardly cut classes at school and was enthusiastic about club activities, showing no sign of committing suicide but the incident has disappeared from the public eye without getting to the bottom of its cause.
One wonders whether this will become a daily happening in the near future. The number of those who take their own lives a year has surpassed 30,000 for 12 consecutive years, and children's suicides remain a serious social problem: in 2008, 972 students and schoolchildren killed themselves. Isolation in society, caused by an inability to form proper relations with others, is blamed for this.
More than a decade has passed since the hikikomori problem, as it's known in Japanese, came to the public's attention. Some experts estimate the number of such recluses across the country at about 1 million. In recent years, it is not rare that those in their 40s shut themselves in their homes. According to the results of a UNICEF survey released in 2007, 29.8 percent of Japanese 15-year-olds feel lonely, well above the 10.3 percent in Iceland, 6.4 percent in France and 5.4 percent in Britain. And the situation does not appear to be improving.
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)-led administration has called for a "shift from concrete to people" -- spending taxpayers' money on people's livelihoods, rather than public works projects. This is reflected in the fiscal 2010 budget draft, but it suggests that the government desperately secured financial resources to carry out its election campaign pledges, rather than show a clear vision on how Japan should be reformed. What will threaten people's livelihoods are problems with medical and nursing care services in the short term, and raising children in the longer term.
In particular, child problems could threaten the basis for our society. If the birthrate keeps declining at the current pace, the prospects for our future livelihood will be gloomy.
The provision of child-care allowances to households with children should be an eye-catching policy measure, but does not appear to have appealed sufficiently to the public. Opposition has been voiced to spending a large amount of taxpayers' money on the program despite the financial squeeze. However, the administration should promote the issue as a springboard to revive Japan, and send a convincing message to the public. Measures should be taken to respond to not only the declining birthrate but also prevent suicides and help hikikomori reintegrate themselves into society. Moreover, the situation in which children of impoverished households cannot receive sufficient medical services or education should be addressed. Schoolyard bullying, depression and child abuse are also serious social problems. Public concern, human resources development and policy-making should focus on these issues, let alone efforts to secure financial resources.
It should be kept in mind that child-care allowances will be provided for children, and not for their families. Such an allowance would have been provided to the 13-year-old who committed suicide last autumn. It is also necessary to develop industries necessary to raise children and support young people's livelihood which will eventually create jobs. Allowances alone are far from enough to ensure that people can give birth and raise their children without worries while continuing to work. Local governments, private companies and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) should play a leading role in providing child-care services -- with the support of the public -- and local bodies should not criticize the central government for requiring them to foot part of the expenses of providing child-care allowances while failing to fulfill their own responsibility for providing child-care services to residents on their own.
Japan's failure to find a way out of the child-care, medical and nursing-care crises is attributable largely to Japan's traditional social security philosophy, in which fathers are the traditional breadwinners, and insurance and pension programs at the companies they work for support their entire families' livelihood. In other words, Japanese people tend to believe that families should be responsible for raising children and nursing care, and that the national government should supplement such practices only in exceptional cases, such as those in which the fathers have lost their jobs or fallen ill.
However, single-parent families and households comprised of only elderly members are common now, while a growing number of people do not marry, forcing traditional family values to adapt.
Moreover, part-time and temporary workers now account for one-third of the entire workforce. If the government continues to address problems involving the outdated system only with deficit-covering bonds and reserve funds, taxpayers will be forced to pay for that in the end. The social security and employment systems should be reformed in response to changes in family values and Japan's society.
Housewives, retirees, the disabled and young people who previously isolated themselves from society and shut themselves in their homes are playing an active role at small businesses that provide child-care, regional medical and welfare services. A wide diversity of such businesses are meeting the demands of regional communities and residents, creating jobs and vitalizing the regional communities. There are potential job opportunities and labor force in Japan. Japan should aim to be a society that is responsible for raising children and give everybody opportunities to work and participate in social activities.
(Mainichi Japan) January 6, 2010