Public Assistance in Japan

Economic development makes resources available for a variety of desirable social goals. However, many of these goals are not automatically related to the economic mechanism of production and income distribution in a private enterprise economy. The social values that sustain economic development are often hostile to a non-market redistribution of resources. This dilemma between the welfare potential of economic development and the social values that make development possible has long been a subject of intense interest to sociologists. In recent years, economists have been paying increasing attention to the problem.