The shocking news that Japan’s relative poverty rate in 2007 remarked the fourth highest among the 30 OECD member countries startled Japanese society. Now for the new government, the poverty issue is one of the imminent political issues to be tackled.
On December 2, Global -COE (Center of Excellence) Program “Research Unit for Statistical and Empirical Analysis in Social Sciences” organized a Forum ‘Addressing the Poverty Problems –Proposals from Hitotsubashi Experts’ at Kanematsu Auditorium of Hitotsubashi University to discuss the issues. Five Hitotsubashi economic experts in this field [Eiji Tajika (Vice President, Professor of Graduate School of Economics and Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy), Yukinobu Kitamura (Professor of Institute of Economics), Masayoshi Hayashi (Associate Professor of Graduate School of Economics and Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy), Daiji Kawaguchi (Associate Professor of School of Economics), Ryo Kanbayashi (Associate Professor of Institute of Economics)] made presentations. In this forum three points including the minimum wage increase which the Democratic Party put in its Manifesto, were focused on.
・Is the minimum wage increase really effective for the poverty problems?
・Is the expansion plan of the present public assistance scheme adequate to solve the poverty problems?
・What provisions for the poverty problems can be made through the taxation system?
Close to 250 people were in the audience listening to the presentations. After the presentations, the audience was given an opportunity to make comments and ask questions to the panelists which led to further discussions.
You can read the contents of the presentations on G-COE Website (in Japanese).
http://www.hit-u.ac.jp/function/outside/news/2009/1202.html
