Besides, they argued, the Japanese family supported its own and made public assistance unnecessary. Whereas Western families were portrayed as collections of autonomous individuals, in Japan — according to one senior official - “it is a family shame to send one of its own out to bother outsiders and to depend on others for assistance ’’. Abe (2007) cites estimates from the late 1990s that about 8% of households below the income criteria for entitlement to means-tested public housing actually live in public housing, and that 10% of households whose annual income is below JPY 2 million (certainly below the income criteria) live in public housing. The Public Assistance law of 1947 was influenced by conditions imposed by the occupying powers, which included governmental responsibility to provide social welfare, and a guaranteed social minimum: “[T]he new law did not link eligibility to inability to work like the old one did” (Estevez-Abe, 2008).122 In 1951 and 1952, Public Assistance was paid to roughly 4% of all households, and in the early 1950s it absorbed 50% of social security expenditure.