This paper examines people's attitudes toward public spending on education in Japan. It is well known that Japan has the smallest public education expenditure relative to GDP among the OECD countries, and this may yield unequal opportunities in education. The tax burden in Japan is small compared to those in OECD countries, and there may be no…

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 generally restricted immigrants' eligibility for welfare to those who had naturalized. By increasing the salience of naturalization, the law provides a unique opportunity to examine how social and economic contexts of reception influence immigrants' pursuit of citizenship. This paper summarizes instrumental-legal…

Research has established that those with higher social status have better health. Less is known about whether this relationship differs cross-nationally and whether it operates similarly across different institutional arrangements. To examine the relationship between stratification and health, two Western, industrialized societies at opposite ends…