A Reexamination of the Concept of Workfare

This paper reexamines the concept of workfare in order to criticize policies that shrink minimum income security and encourage recipients to be employed in the public assistance system in Japan. I survey earlier studies in Japan and distinguish two types of employment oriented social policy: the Human Resource Development model and the Labour Market Attachment model. First, I consider the concept of workfare described by Takafumi Uzuhashi and examine how it is useful in criticizing policies that support self-sufficiency in Japan. I then consider the conceptual turn from workfare to activation by Taro Miyamoto and examine how these approaches differ. I conclude that it is better to define workfare as policies which strengthen the linkage between employment and welfare exclusively within the public assistance system. It is reasonable to use “activation” to refer to not only policies which strengthen but also those that (relatively) weaken this linkage in a broad range of cash benefit systems. There is a clear difference between workfare and activation: the cost of active labour market policies is low in the case of workfare and high in that of activation. However, it is important that both have the abovementioned two types of employment oriented social policy.