Welfare sectors that people regard as being important

According to the results of the National Survey on Lifestyle Preferences carried out by the Cabinet Office, of the ten welfare sectors set up, including education/culture, life in the regional community, and equity/social security, the sectors which the respondents cited as important were medical treatment/insurance, income and consumption, and workers' life, in that order.

The respondents also cited these items, in exactly the same order, as sectors that they wanted to be covered by national and/or municipal policies.

The survey has been carried out once every three years since 1978. The present survey, conducted in 2002, targeted 5,500 randomly selected men and women aged 15 to 74. A total of 4,159 effective responses were collected, with an effective response rate of 75.6%.

"Workers' life" overtook "Living environment" in 1996 to rank third. It was also ranked third in this latest survey.

Meanwhile, "Family" has been showing a slightly declining trend in recent years.

As for the direction our society was moving toward, only 14.3% of the respondents felt that life was moving in a favorable direction. This share has continued to drop since it peaked in 1990, with this year's figure the lowest since the survey began.

Similarly, the share of respondents who were satisfied with life in general hit a record low. It was especially low (40%) among respondents under the age of 50. This shows people's deep concerns and anxiety about medical treatment/insurance, income and consumption, and workers' life, reflecting the recent economic situation in Japan.

Of particular note is the growing gap seen in the importance placed on "workers' life" and the degree of satisfaction with them. This shows respondents' dissatisfaction with current conditions, particularly in the areas of job mobility, availability of jobs worth doing and jobs suited to the individual, availability of extensive vocational training, and successful/intensive labor-management negotiations.

The Japanese public is at present faced with a lot of gloomy news, including the Iraqi war. The only inspiring and cheerful news is the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize last year to two highly individualistic scientists, and this year's Academy Award for the Best Animated Feature going to the animated movie "Spirited Away".

With the economy showing no immediate signs of recovery, the Japanese people would probably have been even more depressed had it not been for these two awards.