New York Times reporter Norimitsu Onishi reports that Kityakushu, a city in Western Japan, has been a national model for limiting welfare payments even as unemployment and poverty increase. The downside is that at least three men have died of starvation, one in each of the last three years.
[singlepic=146,320,240,,left] In reading Death Reveals Harsh Side of a ‘Model’ in Japan, it’s hard to avoid a causal inference: unemployment is up, there are budget pressures, few reservations about shaming the unfortunate, or blaming them – it’s hard to imagine that in a system in which 80% of applicants weren’t allowed to have a copy of the [singlepic=144,320,240,,right] application for assistance, those policies couldn’t have been foreseen to lead to more hunger. That hunger leads to illness and eventually death, one would think, would be a medical proposition with which welfare officials would be familiar.
“The man reportedly told neighbors that he had been denied benefits even though he had prostrated himself before a city official. At his death, he had lost about a third of his body weight and had only a few dollars.”