Yannick Vanderborght & Toru Yamamori, "Basic Income in Japan"

A new book has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan in its series “Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee.” Entitled “Basic Income in Japan. Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State“, and co-edited by Yannick Vanderborght & Toru Yamamori, this collective volume provides the international audience with the very first general overview of the scholarly debate on basic income in Japan. The fifteen chapters offer a balanced picture of this debate, using basic income as a test case for analyzing the ongoing transformations of the Japanese welfare state. Contributors address many of the key issues faced by other developed nations today, such as growing economic insecurity, income and gender inequalities, poverty, ageing, migration, and the future of universal versus selective programs. Even if some remain skeptical about the immediate prospects for this radical idea, all contributors believe in its relevance for the study of contemporary Japan. The volume includes a foreword by Ronald Dore, one of the most prominent experts of Japan’s economy, and a long-standing basic income advocate.

For further information, and the table of contents, see here

A conference on the book will take place at Maison franco-japonaise in Tokyo (in French and Japanese) on October 31, 2014. More details on the conference here.

Full references: VANDERBORGHT, Yannick & YAMAMORI, Toru (eds.) (2014), Basic Income in Japan. Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.