Course Description

There are many underpopulated villages and communities because young people choose to leave in bigger cities for work. As a result of such a trend, the conditions of daily life of the aged has been deteriorating. In this course, students will study about the kind of public and communal measures against such difficulties that have been taken, including nursing care, insurance etc. Through such a study, students can find the roles as well as the insufficient points of those social instruments and think how to reform the system for a more comfortable daily life for those villagers. By studying in this course, students are expected to obtain the knowledge and the zeal which our Diploma Policy emphasizes.

Course Objectives

In underpopulated areas there are so many socio-economic problems such as the lack of hospitals nor retail shops for daily goods, insufficiency of nursing care instruments and so on. So people must ask the municipality offices to solve them. But the latter is facing to the administrative reform under which the number of municipality officers has been decreasing because of their financial difficulties. In this course students study how the municipalities make efforts to deal with such difficult problems by receiving financial aid from central and prefectural governments. At the end of this course, students are expected to be able to discuss with employees of municipalities how to settle such major problems.

Grading Policy

The score will be decided based on the following: Short reports 50%, usual performance including in-class contribution.

Textbook and Reference

Requirements(Assignments)

After class, students should read and revise their notebooks carefully, not only to correct errors but also to understand the exact meaning of important concepts. Whole documents distributed in the class should be read. For a graduate student, it is necessary to spend time on his/her work at least for two hours per one class.

Note

There are many television programs on socio-economic problems in underpopulated areas. Students are recommended to watch such programs to know them concretely.

Schedule