Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

As Japan and Sweden had experienced rapid economical growth after World WarⅡ between 1950 and 1980, both societies have faced problems of urbanization of population and housing supply in that time. Japan and Sweden have also started addressing an aging society in 1980. In the 1990s the Swedish social welfare system had strongly influenced the arrangement of aged people’s welfare system in Japan, guided by some key politicians and researchers. Japanese had introduced not only a service system, but also a planning theory for nursing homes and group homes from Sweden. In those days, both countries launched provision of extra-care housing in the context of consideration of quality of life for the elderly and social cost for institutional care. There are some similar trends of provision of elderly housing in Japan and Sweden even though the economic regime of those societies has been drastically different. In this paper, I will make a comparative analysis of how those societies provide elderly housing considering each social context.