Growth, employment, and social security governance in the EU and Japan

Introduction Globalization and demographic change significantly affect employment, the labor environment, social security, and other social systems. After the financial crisis started in 2008, various social problems arose, such as social exclusion and income disparity, and increasing poverty, especially intergenerational poverty, demonstrating that the crisis was having a serious effect on democracy. We need to consider what types of regime change have taken place in society and on which sectors of the population the burdens have fallen most heavily following the neoliberal restructuring and reforms in the labor market and social security fields that governments have conducted in Japan and Europe since the crisis began to unfold.1