Japan and the poor: On yer bike

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

AMID a din of slot machines and air thick with cigarette smoke, it is hard to believe that the grim-faced punters in the pachinko parlours of Ono are enjoying themselves. But this small city in south-central Japan wants to take no risks. In April it enacted a law that orders citizens to inform on anyone found squandering welfare money on pachinko. Trips to hostess bars are also among the pastimes now forbidden for those on so-called “livelihood assistance”. The city admits that to its knowledge none of its claimants is guilty of such sprees. But the new law goes down well with taxpayers.

Other cities are studying Ono’s tactic. And in August the central government made the first of a series of cuts to benefits amounting to as much as 10% over three years. It is also about to pass a law making it harder to claim welfare. The crackdown comes just as the economy is picking up. Thanks to measures taken by Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, the stockmarket is sharply higher, property values are rising and large companies are more optimistic. This has benefited the better-off, though not, noticeably, the poor. The share of the population on welfare continues to climb.

The figure is still extraordinarily low compared with other countries—Ono, with a population of 50,000, has a mere 149 recipients. But across Japan—a country where the shame of being on benefits is especially great—numbers have been rising. There was much public hand-wringing in 2011, when the number of welfare recipients passed 2m for the first time since the social-security system started after the war. Few then questioned the need to help the poorest at a time of high unemployment, food shortages and inflation. Today more than 2.2m, or 1.7% of the population, draw livelihood assistance (see chart).

Yet the belief that jobs are easy to find and well-paying is still strong, even though the reality has changed since Japan’s boom years. Public perception of people on welfare is worse than it has ever been, says Makoto Yuasa, an anti-poverty activist in Tokyo. The country is having a “welfare queen” moment, he says, similar to Ronald Reagan’s attack on America’s benefit system in 1976. But in Japan the ill-will is unfair. According to the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, only around a fifth of those eligible for welfare actually receive it. Many more unemployed or working poor, as well as impoverished old people, could claim but choose not to. Others are turned away.

Powerful social stigmas are at work. Traditionally, the family is still expected to provide. Last year a wealthy comedian was pilloried on television when it was discovered that his aged mother was claiming welfare, even though entirely legally. Welfare fraud receives close media attention, though claimants are on the whole both more honest and more closely policed than in most countries.

The system will tighten further with the government’s welfare-reform bill. Local authorities will be able to investigate the ability of families to support their relations, demanding bank details and even checking up with relatives’ employers. Currently authorities may only request that families help out. The new law will increase the proportion of people either not applying or being turned away at local city counters, says Tetsuro Kokubo, director of a national council on welfare problems.

It also risks further increasing a problem which is already alarmingly prevalent: dozens of cases each year of poor people quietly starving to death at home. Such cases have in the past shamed the authorities into making it easier to get help from the state. But now the trend is to get tough. Since Ono’s new law in April, in six instances citizens reported suspected welfare cheats. One case of heavy drinking was linked to mental health problems already known to the authorities. Three pachinko players who were fingered were not in fact receiving government money. The other two reports led to people in dire need immediately being given benefits.

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