Until a few years ago I concentrated my attention on workers' compensa-
tion programs in the United States and Canada. Because the United States
has 52 programs and Canada has eight, I was exposed to a diversity of
approaches that caused me to believe that few other approaches existed.
Since 1984 I have become more aware of what the rest of the world has
been doing and discovered that my knowledge needed to be broadened
significantly. The trigger action was a 1984 faculty research exchange
agreement between Keio University in Tokyo and the University of
Minnesota that made it possible for me to spend much of my time studying
Japan's workers' compensation program and comparing it with the United
States approaches. Japan's program had several features that I had not
encountered in the United States or Canada. After this experience I
attached considerably more value to and spent more time studying the
Social Security Administration's biennial reports on Social Security
Pro- grams Throughout The World, which include workers' compensation
programs. I also presented papers at two meetings of the International
Insurance Society based on my Japanese and Social Security Adminis-
tration report research. Many participants urged further study in this
area and offered to send me materials describing their nations'
programs. The result is this study which I hope that readers will find
interesting and worthwhile.