Japan Press Weekly

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2014 July 30 - August 12 [WELFARE]

Welfare recipients receive less benefits

The amount of welfare benefits per recipient is decreasing, according to the Internal Affairs Ministry survey results released on August 1.

Between 2001 and 2011, the number of people on welfare increased 1.7 times from 1.24 million to 2.06 million. The total amount of government payment for livelihood support rose 1.6 times from 2.2 trillion yen to 3.5 trillion yen. Welfare payment per recipient, however, fell from 690,000 yen to 650,000 yen a year.

According to the survey results, 57% of welfare benefit applicants had less than 10,000 yen in hand when they filed their application.

Regarding the length of time before the approval of applications by local governments, 36% of the cases exceeded the legal upper limit of 14 days, and 1.6% took more than 30 days.

As the reason for this delay, of cases where local welfare authorities make inquiries to banks regarding applicants’ savings, more than 80% took at least 14 days to receive an answer.

The survey data were collected from 102 welfare offices in 22 prefectures.