Japan is het meest vergrijsde land ter wereld met 28,2% bevolking boven de 65 jaar in 2020. Ten gevolge van het vruchtbaarheidscijfer dat sinds 2013 reeds onder het vervangingsniveau ligt, en de...Show moreJapan is het meest vergrijsde land ter wereld met 28,2% bevolking boven de 65 jaar in 2020. Ten gevolge van het vruchtbaarheidscijfer dat sinds 2013 reeds onder het vervangingsniveau ligt, en de Japanse bevolking de hoogste levensverwachting ter wereld heeft, dreigt de vergrijzing verder toe te nemen. Hetzelfde geldt voor de Japanse gevangenispopulatie. In 1989 was slecht 2,4% van alle tot detentie berechte personen 65 jaar of ouder. In 2018 was dit percentage 12,2%, oftewel een toename van ruim 900 procent in bijna 30 jaar. In de White Paper of Crime 2008 gaf het Japanse Ministerie van Justitie reeds aan dat de ontwikkelingen omtrent de criminele betrokkenheid van ouderen redenen zijn voor verontrusting. Zo wordt er vermeld dat onderzoek naar oudere delinquenten noodzakelijk is en de werkelijke oorzaak van de toename in kaart moet worden gebracht, aangezien de toename namelijk niet aangeschreven kan worden door de verouderende maatschappij. In deze studie wordt dan ook getracht de factoren te identificeren die bijdragen tot de vergrijzing van de Japanse gevangenispopulatie.Show less
Despite having a relatively small elderly population, South Korea's elderly poverty rate outranks that of all other countries with 43.8 percent of all elderly people living in poverty. Moreover,...Show moreDespite having a relatively small elderly population, South Korea's elderly poverty rate outranks that of all other countries with 43.8 percent of all elderly people living in poverty. Moreover, the Korean elderly are poorer than all other age groups. To make up for this inequality, one third of the elderly population stays active on the labour market. This study examines how changes in family dynamics, current social welfare programmes and pension policies explain this high elderly workforce participation rate. To do so, it uses secondary literature, analyses government reports and laws in addition to statistics published by databanks of the OECD and Statistics Korea, among others. In order to understand the importance of this analysis, the Korean case is brought into world context by comparing it with Japan and the Netherlands. This study found that Korea's current elderly support system is unbalanced and has not yet reached its full potential: the combination of shifting household structures and the immature pension system leaves the elderly with a weak safety net that fails to keep them from living below the poverty line.Show less
This thesis is about the social recovery of Japanese elderly after disasters, more specifically after the 3.11 disaster. The theory of Pierre Bourdieu was used to analyze the difficulty of elderly...Show moreThis thesis is about the social recovery of Japanese elderly after disasters, more specifically after the 3.11 disaster. The theory of Pierre Bourdieu was used to analyze the difficulty of elderly to recover on a social level from disasters by looking at the amount of social capital that elderly might have before the disaster and what social capital they could lose as a result of that. It appears that the elderly do not necessarily have more difficulty to recover socially from a disaster because of the amount of social capital they generally possess. This forms a contrast with the general stereotypes of the elderly.Show less
The problem of the elderly in post-3.11 Japan is not solvable at any single level. One cannot reduce all phenomena to results of a single factor, be it governmental practice, change in social...Show moreThe problem of the elderly in post-3.11 Japan is not solvable at any single level. One cannot reduce all phenomena to results of a single factor, be it governmental practice, change in social capital, or arbitrary wills of a group of people. After all, the levels that are investigated in this paper only represent some perspectives of inquiry. It is the variety and specificity of older people’s situations that a proper research on them has to respect. Correspondingly, the foremost implication of this research is the importance of being patient to and leaving space for, the multiplicity of the voices of the elderly.Show less
