A high-income country with the world’s third-largest economy and a predominantly urban population of over 126 million (UN 2019), Japan is renowned for its highly developed social health protection system (Ikegami 2019), which encompasses four compulsory, contributory social health insurance (SHI) schemes: an employment-based scheme called Employee’s Health Insurance; a residence-based scheme called Citizens’ Health Insurance for those not employed, self-employed, and retirees; a contributory Health Insurance for Advanced Elderly scheme that covers all adults who are 75 years and older; and an age-based long-term care insurance scheme. All schemes provide a similarly comprehensive set of benefits, which is determined and approved by the National Government (The Commonwealth Fund 2020; Sakamoto et al. 2018; JHPN 2015). 

This country brief is part of the country briefs series: Social Protection in action: building social protection floors for all.