The Abe administration has unveiled a package of "urgent" policy measures to realize what it calls "a society in which all citizens are dynamically engaged," featuring a sharp increase in the capacity of nursing care facilities for the elderly and day care services for children. The measures are supposedly aimed at helping achieve Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "new three arrows" to boost Japan's gross domestic product, raise the nation's total fertility rate and prevent company employees from leaving jobs to care for their aging relatives. But the package fails to specify the fiscal resources to implement the proposed steps or address the severe problem of manpower shortage in the nursing care service sector — which raises the question of just how serious the administration is in pushing its new agenda.
Abe started mentioning "dynamic engagement of all citizens" as the new policy slogan of his administration — a term whose meaning left even some of his own Cabinet members and ruling coalition leaders puzzled — and installed his close aide as the new minister in charge when he reshuffled his Cabinet in October. It appeared to be part of the prime minister's campaign to refocus public attention on the economy following the enactment of his government's security legislation, which sharply dividing public opinion and temporarily pushed down his popular approval ratings.
The package unveiled last week, among other things, called for increasing the number of nursing care homes to accommodate 500,000 more elderly people by the early 2020s, making day care services available for 500,000 more children by the end of fiscal 2017 and raising the legal minimum wage by 3 percent each year so that it reaches ¥1,000 per hour by around 2020.