On Jan. 16, the Fukushima District Court ruled in favor of a woman and her daughter who had sued the city of Fukushima for cutting their welfare benefits. When the woman’s daughter was in high school, the woman received a grant scholarship to help her child prepare for university by covering expenses for things such as cram schools. The city office deemed the scholarship to be “income” and subtracted the amount from her family’s government assistance, because children in low-income households that receive benefits are expected to leave the household and find a job after they turn 18 or graduate high school. The court said the city could not deny the benefits and told it to compensate the family.
According to the Tokyo Shimbun, initial press coverage of the suit prompted the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, which administers government assistance, to issue a directive in August 2015 and instruct the city of Fukushima to pull back from reducing the family’s benefits. On Jan. 19, after the district court ruling, welfare minister Katsunobu Kato said he would instruct welfare offices nationwide to avoid such problems in the future.
Kato’s announcement would seem to indicate a change in policy, but until the Public Assistance Law is amended, local governments can still withhold benefits for children who plan to attend university. One of the conditions of the law is that welfare recipients take advantage of their capabilities in order to maintain a minimum standard of living. In other words, if anyone in a household can work, they must. A child who wishes to continue on an educational path beyond high school forfeits their share of the household’s benefits. The Fukushima District Court decision implies that the government’s condition effectively prevents children of low-income families from getting out of the poverty cycle by means of higher education.