Japan's economic takeoff coincided with the expansion of its welfare state. In 1961, Japan extended old-age pension and health care coverage to include, at least potentially, all citizens. Indeed, the Ministry of Welfare proudly announced that Japan had achieved All Nation Insurance (Kokumin Kaihoken), alluding to the universalistic ideal associated with Sir William Beveridge's famous report. In the mid-1960s, the government also began to increase steadily the levels of pension benefits, and this trend continued well into the 1970s. Furthermore, during the early 1970s, Japan introduced two new programs – the Children's Allowance (Jido Teate) and health care for the elderly. The two new programs were universalistic, unlike any other programs that had been previously introduced in Japan. In 1973, Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka famously proclaimed that year as Fukushi Gannen, meaning “the first year of the welfare calendar.”

These developments, at first glance, appear to contradict my structural logic. The institutionally constrained micrologic of welfare politics put forth in this book holds that distributive implications of welfare politics are only expected to change when either electoral rules change or the configuration of parliamentary veto players changes. Neither type of change occurred during the welfare expansion period in the 1960s and the early 1970s. This means that the same kind of political dynamics described in the previous chapters continued to shape welfare politics during the welfare expansion period.