福祉国家のクラス（必修）期末レポート

青リンゴの田舎の
とおちゃん、かあちゃんに感謝して。

これは必修の福祉国家のクラスに出したレポートです。
英語で書きました。
先生によっては留学生に寛大で
英語で書いても見てくれます。
うちの中国語では今回期限までに
間に合わなそうだったので、、先生英語ゆるしてくれて
ありがとうございます。

このレポートは
日本の２０００年の年金問題について
書いたものです。
今後の課題としては、
やっぱり分析力を高める事、
英語をもっと英語らしくすること、
授業で使った理論をもっと盛り込むこと
参考資料を全部英語で書く事
いっぱいです。
でもいまこういう者が書ける環境に感謝！

なぜか、図がちゃんとアップロードできないので
図省略。。
すいません、イタリック字体もちゃんとでてこないけど
いちいち直しません。

ちなみに、この授業は
期末レポートは成績の５０％くらいでした。



Japanese National Pension Reforms of 2000s

I. Introduction

Japan has build a two-tier national pension systems since 1985 that the lower tier is the Basic Pension for all citizens and the upper tier is for each individual’s income, which includes Employees’ and Mutual Pensions. For those self-employed workers join National Pension (Basic Pension), while company workers participate in Employees’ Pension and civil servants join Mutual Pension. The payment of Employees’ and Mutual Pension benefits are depend on monthly pension premiums from their income which means company employee need to pay 14.996% and for civil servants 11.876 to 14.869% of their salary (Shakaihosyo Nyumon, 2009:152) . On the other hand Basic Pension payment is a fixed monthly insurance premium which is 14,660 yen in 2009 (Nishinippon shinbun, 2009) . If one pays 40 years of National Pension payment age from his 20 to 60, full benefits are 66,000 for every month (ibid).

This article contributes to investigate the falling state autonomy and state capacity over Japanese pension reforms of 2000s based on Theda Skocpol State-centered theory. Accordingly the paper discusses both political and non-political organizations’ influences on pension reforms and also determines the capacity of ruling party to pass the reform bills. It may be no exaggeration to mention that the nation’s state autonomy and state capacity have been declining respectively in 2000s due to decrease in government supporting rate with series of pension financial scandals and the rise of powerful institutions against the ruling party.

II. History of National Pension Reforms in 2000s

Under the pressure of continuous the low birthrate, the Japanese government completed at least twice pension reforms mainly for solving financial problems that younger generation would have more burden on their payment due to monthly pension premiums directly becomes elderly benefit under the accurate predict of the ageing society. Appropriately these two reforms are pension reform of 2000 and 2004.

Pension Reform of 2000

According to the Lower House national proceedings information (2000) , the pension reform law was passed into law in March 28th in 2000 during the 147th ordinary parliamentary session. The law includes three main reforms that are reductions in Employee’s Pension benefits by 5% (enforcement in April 2004), shifting Employee’s Pension benefits age from 60 to 65 (enforcement starts from 2013 to 2025, upgrade benefit age in every three year), and freeze on sliding pay scale for national pension premium (enforcement in April 2000) (Miyamoto, 2003: 3) . In fact this reform was originally planned in 1999 but due to the sharp criticism from the opposition parties, both 145th ordinary and 146th extraordinary parliamentary sessions failed to complete making draft law (ibid., 3).

The 2000 pension reform had left a couple of problems which those were not covered until 2004. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) (2004) states that the government put off the issue of National Pension Funds whether the National Treasury shares one third of pension funds or half. As for the Basic Pension, the 2000 reform added a supplementary provision that shares from the Treasury would be half in 2004. Additionally they untreated the decline of the payments and disappearance of housewives’ pension benefits when they divorce.

Pension Reform of 2004

The pension reform of 2004 put into force on June 5. The government decided to apply a half of the Treasury into the Basic Pension budget, and this implementation starts from 2004 by 2009. Correspondingly since introduction of fixed premium and a macro-slide adjustment, which is based on the assumption of no increase in prices or wages, the reform law calls for a gradual increase in the monthly national pension premium to a final fixed amount of 16,900 yen in 2017 (MHLW, 2004). At the same time, Employee premiums go through the same kind of increase from the ordinal 13.58% to 18.3% by 2017 thereby their benefits would decrease from 59% of annual salary to no less than 50% (Yoshida et al, 2006; 396) . The reform also decided that the time when housewives’ need to divide the national pension with their husbands, they are able to carve up a half of husband’s Employees’ Pension (MHLW, 2004).

The 2004 legislation reflected both Japanese national pension traditional and new problematic factors that these are heavy personal burdens of premiums payments and the increase in absence of payment. Before the 2004 reform, 64.5% of people not paying premiums answered they had economical difficulty to pay the cost (Miyamoto, 2004: 193).

III. Institutions’ Protests Involvements on Pension Reforms

As Table 1 and Table 2 show, both political and non-political organizations went against the government pension reform of 2004 after the 2000 reform over financial situation.

Political Party Organizations

Altogether four times elections of the Lower House general elections in 2000s showed us the rise of other popular political parties , the 2003 election remarkably represented the first election in which the main parties publicly pledged their manifestos including each pension policy and made a sign of departure from traditional political mobilization based on factions and patronage (Yoshida et al. 2006: 392). Consequently the greatest concern of Japanese people prior to the election had been economic policy, especially social security due to the long recession (ibid., 393). It was the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ:民主党) became the largest non-LDP party with winning 177 seats against LDP coalition obtained 275 seats, as a result, the party became a more powerful opposition (Japan Times, 2003) . Matsui (2005) summarizes the feature of DPJ’s pension policies since 2000 are Basic Pension with full consumption tax-qualified, the formation of minimum guaranteed pension benefits, and earning-related pension scheme.

At the Lower House general election of August 2009, DPJ was elected by landslide victory. DPJ addressed their pension manifest in July, saying they will form a individual passbook of Basic Pension, unify three kind of national pensions into one public pension with guaranteed minimum 70,000 yen pension in monthly, and abolish personal expense of latter-stage elderly people (age 75 and over) to pay 10% of medical care cost which began in May 17, 2005 under the third Koizumi administration (Hatoyama, 2009) . In reality DPJ has not realized any of these manifests until today.

For the second and the last political party organization in this article is the Komeito (New Clean Government Party: NCGP; New Komeito: NK; 公明党) which is a part of coalition government with LDP since 1998 (See Appendix I). The party has had an impact on LDP as bringing following contexts into coalition relationship. Since 2002, Komeito stressed a new pension system which the creation of children’s pension by utilizing Basic Pension financial resources. This policy is for all kind of family, no matter how much income parents earn, parents who have zero-to-fifteen age children receive 10,000 yen for per child, and 20,000 yen for family with more than two children (from three children) (Matsui, 2005: 32).

Furthermore, they highlighted “pension reform for next 100 years” in their Manifest of 2004, promising unification of Employees’ and Mutual Pensions, providing entitle women to pension, creating benefits for individual unit not for married couple unit, solving absence of payment and the issue of refuse from new participants to join the national pensions by taking certain yearly breakpoint, and they declare finally more reforms of the Social Insurance Agency and pensions of Congressmen (Komeito, 2005) .

Non-Political Party Organizations

Miyamoto (2003) and Matsui (2005) confirm that several organizations had carried on protests movements toward pension reforms. Following explanations show the degree of each institution’s disagreement to the reform and also their impact on Reform of 2004.
Firstly Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC: 日本労働組合総連合会/連合) launched the Vision of Social Security Service in 21st Century in October, 2002 and demanded the establishment of consumption tax-qualified Basic Pension system, the maintenance of two-tier system, and the establishment of a new Employees’ Pension system for part-time workers (JTUC, 2003) . Since 2002, JTUC began to clam the increase of the Treasure share in Basic Pension up to half (Miyamoto, 2003: 190) and simultaneously the government decreases the amount of pension insurance premiums.

When it comes to changing the Treasure share on Basic Pension, it was the same for Zenroren (denotes nation-wide labor association union: 全国労働組合総連合/全労連). They primary asserted that reforms of pension, medical service, Employees’ insurance, and elderly at-home care insurance since 2000 (ibid). Simply increase a burden of the people somehow around 3 trillion yen (3 billion dollars) in total in a year and so Miyamoto (2003) explains that the organization believes let the government cut the budget of public projects and use that money for increasing the Treasure share.

Subsequently the Japan Pensioners’ Union (JPU: 全国日本年金者組合/年金者組合) coped with Zenrouren and 200 representatives from 23 different prefectural and city governments made an official request to MHLW (ibid., 191). JPU requests included the abandonment of increase in premiums, to increase the Treasure share in Basic Pension up to half, to disapprove increasing tax rate, and to call an end for job cut and stagnant wages (JPU, 2003) .

Approaching to the Japan Business Federation (JBF: 日本経済団体連合会/経団連/日経連), their basic demands are the establishment of Basic Pension system with adopting one-half budget from consumption tax (Matsui, 2005: 33). JBF regards those problems for Basic Pension are following three (JBF, 2002) . The absence of payment causes a situation to make the people feel signing up the national pension is just like an optional choice. Next, since collecting premiums for Employees’ Pension is stable from companies under the law, applying Employees’ Pension financial resources to Basic Pension is wrong because this would cause uneven benefits later to retired workers. Third, Basic Pension premium is fixed for self-employed (No.1 pension) insured and so this causes unbalanced burden and benefits among them due to different occupations and wages these days.

JBF also criticizes Employees’ Pension system with four reasons (JBF, 2002). The system was originally pay-as-you-go pension but it turned out both pay-as-you-go with consumption duties system, for that reason, the public has little understanding and larger discredit for the future benefits. Secondly the increase of premiums causes that people who were born after 1960 receive less benefits than their payments. Thirdly present and the future generations and corporations suffer from more premiums’ burdens in order to no hope for increase in wages and birthrate.

Lastly JBF concerns current benefits are too expensive because lifestyle of the people has changed so that the government should promote independence and self-help of elderly. This belief explains the reason why they emphasize needlessness of company’s responsibility to cover worker’s half insurance fee (Matsui, 2005: 33).

The last but not least, a non-political party organization, the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP: 経済財政諮問会議) literally stands on the side of the LDP government. The CEFP started in 2001 and ended their activity in 2009 with the birth of JDP cabinet under the Hatoyama Prime Minister (DGPP, 2010) . Their positions for Pension Reform of 2004 were to decrease in both benefits and premium. CEFP put priorities on making affordable insurance fee for the people and also raising the age for the beneficiary in order to realize a small government. For instance, the government collects social insurance fees to make individual accounts, and also collects nursing home fee from elderly pension to hand over more freedom of choices to the people (Matsui, 2005;33).

III. Falling State Autonomy and State Capacity

In 2000s, LDP was hit by series of scandals that most of cases revealed with an effort of opposition party led by DPJ (See Appendix I) demanding investigations to the Social Insurance Agency. At that time the media particularly reported the issue of misuse of national pension financial resources and loss of records by the Agency and related conducts by bureaucrats under the command of LDP.

The Nikkei Net disclosed that premiums from Employees’ and Basic Pensions misused from 1952 to 2007 and the total amount would be 6 trillion and 787.8 billion yen (6兆7878億円) (Nikkei, 2007) . Besides, Ms. Ogiwara Hiroko, a famous female economic journalist, explains to the public as next. MHLW and the Agency do business in welfare projects by sending retired men to an independent administrative institutions such as Green Pier Project, and then when the project are at an operational loss about 16 trillion yen during 2006 to 2007, they emphasize increase in pension payments and decrease in benefits (Asahi, 2009a) .

In addition to the misuse of national pension, the loss of 64 million national pension records in 2007 is reported and the incident caused quite low supporting rate which was 20% approval rating in ’08-’09 Aso government (Wall Street Journal Asia, 2009) . It sank to 34% when ’06-’07 Abe cabinet mired in a pension scandal (Austin, 2007).

Needless to say, these money scandals and protests involvements by several institutions for national pensions dropped the state autonomy in Japan, which had been formed by LDP. Right after Pension Reform of 2000, prominent non-political parties strongly opposed to the government’s pension financial policy such as JTUC, Zenrouren, and JPU claiming the use of the Treasure as Table 2. Surprisingly at Pension Reform of 2004, the Koizumi administration leaned on JPU not their adherent CEFP by adopting the idea of covering half of Basic Pension financial resources with the Treasure. JPU’s demand on this part was the same with Komeito.
The protests’ movement finally changed the Diet in time. DPJ had captured 60 seats, far better than the 37 gained by LDP at the 11th Upper House election in 2007 (Japan Times, 2007) . This incident indicates us that the people in Japan were already taking sides of DPJ’s minimum guaranteed benefits and earning-related pension ideas.

In fact the breakup of ruling LDP has started in ’01-’06 Koizumi government due to conflicts over social security reforms. Primarily voters expressed their favor in both the Lower and Upper House elections. On the site of the 10th Upper House election on July 25 in 2004, some LDP members, who were in-serve at that time, were rejected re-election due to the public strong dislike toward the increase in national pension insurance (Asahi, 2010) . Recalling those days the situation of Congressmen who left LDP with their wills, many of them left the party in 2005 because they were against on postal service privatization (Asahi, 2009b) .

After DPJ has occupied larger seats in the Upper House since 2007, Japan’s state autonomy also went down. Although LDP has promised more than a decade to adjust the pension and social security system, they were not able to pass bills because of new Upper House structure. The outstanding leader of DPJ, Mr. Ichiro Ozawa (小沢一郎), already controled the Upper House of Parliament during ‘08-’09 Aso administration (Koll, 2009). With Ozawa Democratic efforts, Hatoyama administration took office as Prime Minister, and correspondingly counterattack from LDP began. Five secretaries of these two men were prosecuted under the possible violation of Political Funding Regulation Law and so LDP executive general, Mr. Ohshima, asked taking responsibility for these incidents to the Prime Minister (MSN Sankei, 2010) .

Astonishingly Hatoyama government broke the Social Insurance Agency and established an institute which is called Japan Pension Service (日本年金機構) in 2010 and tried to take away power from the bureaucrats of the Agency. However, he decided to resign the post with no further pension reforms. After his resign, the Kan government promises the people that solving the issue of missing national pension records by 2011, no more misuse of pension insurance premiums, realizing earning-related pension system with minimum guaranteed 70,000 yen benefits, abolishing healthcare system for the latter-stage elderly which the ’01-’06 Koizumi regime built by 2013 (DPJ, 2010:14) . At present the public watch the sequence of new government and his DPJ manifesto of pension reform.

IV. Conclusion

In this article, we analyzed protests movements not only by political parties but also by labor unions and commercial organizations who have opposed to Japanese national pension reforms of 2000 and 2004. They mostly concern financial resources for pension system either using the National Treasure or consumption tax to cover half of a national pension. Surly social security reforms conducted by Koizumi regime left crucial issues such as increase in insurance premiums without any special measurements for people who are not able to pay traditional insurance fees. Nonetheless, for those series of national pension money scandals by the Social Insurance Agency which was under the LDP let the people consider DJP is likely more capable to reform the pension system. Ultimately changes in both the Lower and Upper House seats bring the country ugly reciprocal criticize in the Diet thereby temporally cause the decline of state capacity of passing the reform bills. To understand a proper national pension scheme for Japan, we should expect further research on both opposition forces to the current DPJ administration and the party’s capacity to carry on passing new laws. Unfortunately lawmakers in Japan seemed like have not realized what the public ask for. To solve current low birthrate and absence of premium payment, those lawmakers should step forward to seek an acceptable policy.


V. References
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