I. Social Security Expenditure

1.

The scope of social security expenditure in this publication is based on the ILO (International Labour Office) standards for international comparison.

The ILO defines social security expenditure as all of the schemes or services which meet the following three criteria:

(i)
The objectives of the schemes must be: a) to grant curative or preventive medical care; b) to maintain income in case of involuntary loss of earnings or of an important part of earnings; or c) to grant a supplementary income to persons having family responsibilities.
(ii)
The system must have been set up by legislation which attributes specified individual rights to, or which imposes specified obligations on, a public, semi-public or autonomous body.
(iii)
The system should be administered by a public, semi-public or autonomous body.

However, where the liability for the compensation of employment injuries is imposed directly on the employer, the schemes for employment injury compensation are included in the scope of social security expenditure even if they do not meet criterion iii) above.
On the basis of the criteria listed above, the following schemes are included in these statistics: social insurance (including unemployment insurance and employment injury compensation insurance), family allowances, special schemes for public employees, public health service, public assistance, social welfare schemes, and aid for war victims.

Social security expenditure is based on the above ILO standards and is estimated in each fiscal year budget for expenditure in each system of social security in Japan (see Table 7, "The cost of social security in fiscal year 1997 according to ILO standards"). Since 1949, the ILO has conducted 18 international inquiries on the cost of social security, and has published social security expenses data submitted by various countries in "The Cost of Social Security" (data up to FY1993 included). The nineteenth international inquiry (data from FY1994-1997), which gives a reassessment of a section of the standards and patterns of calculation, is currently being conducted. (See Reference: International Comparison)
See http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/socsec/publ/css/index.htm
Japan's tables presented on the ILO web page are not identical to the ones we publish here. ILO eliminated Japan's data for "public health" from our original table for their own purposes. We cannot accept the elimination because "public health" includes all health care and disease prevention costs paid from general government budgets, and they must be included according to the ILO criteria i) (a) to grant curative and preventive medical care, above.
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2.

Social security expenditure is divided into "Medical care," "Pensions," and "Welfare & Others;"

(i)
Medical care includes medical services provided under various health insurance schemes, health services system for the aged, medical services for Workmen's Accident Compensation Insurance, medical services for public assistance and government-financed special medical services, such as the treatment of tuberculosis and mental disorders, public health services, etc.
(ii)
Pensions includes payments by all the public pension schemes such as National Pensions, Employees' Pension Insurance, etc. It also includes some cash benefits paid in the form of pensions within the scheme of gratuities for retired civil servants and the scheme for Workmen's Accident Compensation Insurance.
(iii)
Welfare & Others includes public assistance other than medical services, cash benefits for child allowance, expenses for social welfare services, sickness and injury cash benefits within the health insurance schemes, leave compensation benefits paid by the Workmen's Accident Compensation Insurance, unemployment benefits from Employment Insurance, etc.

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