East Asian Welfare Regimes Research Articles

Public attitudes towards government’s role in unemployment provision in three East Asian countries

ABSTRACT Public support for unemployment provision is essential to provide political legitimacy for welfare policy arrangements and yet it is understudied in East Asian welfare states. In contrast with the proposed unfavourable attitudes towards welfare among East Asian countries from the developmental/productivist perspectives, the study suggests socio-demographic and ideological differences in public attitudes towards the role of government in unemployment provision within and across Japan, (South) Korea, and Taiwan, which differ in welfare production regime and extent of labour market dualization. Data from the 2016 Role of Government V survey of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) was analysed. Findings revealed lower levels of public support for unemployment provision in large firm-oriented welfare production regimes like Japan and Korea, though in which labour market outsiders such as women, younger people, and unemployed workers were more supportive than their counterparts. Despite cross-national attitudinal differences, higher levels of support were consistently found in the lowest-income groups across three East Asian countries. The study provides new evidence of diverse patterns of welfare attitudes regarding unemployment provision in the East Asian welfare regimes. It also presents the need of (un)employment protection among labour market outsiders and low-income groups within these countries.

Transforming Familialistic Youth Welfare Policies in East Asia: A Comparative Analysis of Changes in Higher Education Support Policies in Korea and Japan

In East Asia, higher education support policies (HESPs), as the core of the social policies targeting young people, have undergone a significant transformation since the 2000s. The aim of this article is to articulate the reformation process of HESPs by focusing on the National Student Loan system and to investigate whether support for youth is still considered a family responsibility in the post-2000s environment. The findings offer a crucial clue in understanding the transformation of the familialistic East Asian welfare regime. The analysis reveals that Japan continues to respond to the expansion of youth support through family policy, but Korea is attempting to provide support for youth directly to individuals as an independent welfare target. This implies that HESPs are gradually losing their family-oriented characteristics, although these characteristics remain present in Japan, and that the familialistic East Asian welfare regime itself may transform in the future.

DEVELOPING AND ANALYZING NEW WELFARE TYPOLOGIES BASED ON HEALTH CARE, LEAVE BENEFIT AND EDUCATION POLICY DOMAINS COVERING 16 EAST ASIAN AND EUROPEAN CAPITALIST COUNTRIES/REGIONS

Since Esping-Andersen [(1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. New York: Wiley] classified 18 capitalist countries into "three worlds of welfare capitalism", comparative studies of welfare have been dominated by his work and the responses to it. This paper focuses on two important responses. Firstly, there is a criticism that East Asian welfare regimes have not been given sufficient attention in the study by Esping-Andersen (1990). Secondly, analysts have doubts about the assumption that welfare regimes have a high degree of internal policy cohesion. To make contributions to these two responses, two analytical tasks are conducted. Firstly, new health care, education and leave benefits policy domains covering 16 East Asian and European capitalist countries/territories are built. Secondly, evidence generated from these policy domains is used to inform the discussion of two arguments: (i) there is a lack of essential conditions for East Asian countries/territories to form their own unique category of welfare regime in the areas of education, health care and leave benefits; and (ii) welfare regimes have a high degree of internal policy cohesion.

Framing Immigrant Rights in Politics: Comparative Evidence From Japan and South Korea*

The aim of this study is to analyse and compare how the rights of low‐skilled labour migrants have been formed and developed in Japan and South Korea, from a discursive institutionalist perspective. Over the last two decades, interestingly, the two East Asian nation‐states, although having similar policy legacies of East Asian welfare and immigration regimes (productivism and ethnic nationalism), have demonstrated different policy developments regarding the two groups of low‐skilled labour migrants, resulting in different paths in terms of their rights – i.e., persistent ethnic differentiation in Japan and ethnically hierarchical inclusion in Korea. This article argues that the rationale behind the difference between Japan and Korea can be found in their different discursive interaction processes of policy legacies and alternative policy ideas (human rights and multiculturalism). That is to say, policy legacies have legitimised and strengthened the existing policy paradigms of low‐skilled foreign‐born populations – i.e., ethnic differentiation in Japan and differential exclusion in Korea, whereas alternative ideas have reinforced and/or challenged the paradigms, thereby engendering different approaches to the inclusion/exclusion of low‐skilled labour migrants.

An intersection of East Asian welfare and immigration regimes: The social rights of low‐skilled labour migrants in Japan and Korea

Over the last two decades East Asian countries have demonstrated the simultaneous developments of state welfare provision, immigration control and immigrant integration policy. Despite significant growth in related interest and research, studies on immigrants and their social inclusion are still relatively scarce, especially in terms of the intersection of East Asian welfare and immigration regimes. This study thus examined and compared, from a historical perspective, the development of welfare and immigration regimes and their impact on the social rights of low‐skilled labour migrants in Japan and South Korea. These two countries have taken somewhat divergent paths, which has resulted in the persistent ethnic differentiation of low‐skilled labour migrants in Japan and their ethnically hierarchical inclusion in Korea. This article argues that the two policy legacies of East Asian welfare and immigration regimes, namely, productivism and ethnic nationalism, still significantly matter in policy making related to low‐skilled labour migrants.

Japan's Changing Regional World of Welfare: Agricultural Reform, Hamlet-based Collective Farming, and the Local Renegotiation of Social Risks

This article analyzes agricultural reform as an element of broader shifts in the Japanese welfare regime. In postwar Japan, agricultural support and protection served as a "functional equivalent" to welfare provision in rural and semi-rural areas. However, an ongoing agricultural reform process has put pressure on aging smallholders and on JA, the powerful organization of agricultural cooperatives. This article investigates how these local actors have responded to an increasingly hostile socio-economic and political environment. To address this question, the article focuses on hamlet-based collective farming, which is a form of agricultural production that can reproduce the welfare character of the postwar support and protection regime on the local level. Based on field research in several rural and semi-rural communities, the article argues that the functions and the local proliferation of hamlet-based farming are shaped by village institutions: hamlet-level norms and rules governing land use and agricultural cooperation, as well as social ties between hamlets, local co-ops, and local governments. While the integration of village institutions into local cooperative and administrative structures can support a systematic local proliferation of collective farming, municipal and cooperative mergers have rendered such comprehensive local responses more complicated. More generally, the article proposes to investigate local acts of recombining community ties and norms with changing macro policies as a promising analytical angle to understand the ongoing renegotiation of East Asian welfare regimes.

The Less-Known History of the Voluntary Sector in an East Asian Welfare Regime: A South Korean Case

AbstractAlthough the voluntary sector is internationally valued as an integral component of the welfare mix, studies on East Asian welfare regimes have primarily focused on state-market-family interactions, paying scant attention to the long-standing and pivotal role of voluntary agencies in their construction. This case study illuminates this less-known aspect of modern welfare history in the context of South Korea, with a particular focus on the activities of voluntary organizations. The study categorizes South Korean voluntary associations into four types and examines their different contributions in shaping South Korea’s welfare regime, by applying Young’s framework on government–voluntary organizations relations. This historical exploration on the South Korean voluntary sector aims to deepen understanding of an East Asian welfare state regime. It further suggests that current welfare mix debates, focusing on the service delivery role of voluntary organizations within Western European welfare states, should be broadened.

Public–private pension mixes in East Asia: institutional diversity and policy implications for old-age security

AbstractPrevious studies of East Asian welfare regimes focus on similarities between social security schemes. In contrast, this paper explores cross-national variations in public–private pension mixes in six welfare states: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Our research echoes the pension policy analysis of international organisations but takes a step forward with emphasis on the historical and institutional characteristics of the respective pension systems. The analysis identifies three institutional patterns. First, the statist pension system (Taiwan and China) primarily relies on public pensions to provide old-age security, with private pensions playing a rather minor role. Second, in the dualist pension system (Japan and Korea) both public and private pensions work in parallel to ensure retirement income, though a clear security gap exists between workers in the formal and informal economies. Finally, the individualist pension system (Hong Kong and Singapore) is characterised by genuine fully funded individual accounts, emphasising citizens’ own responsibilities for ensuring old-age security. These three types of pension systems demonstrate distinct institutional characteristics and policy outcomes, illustrated by the juxtaposition of their institutional structures as well as by the comparison of key indicators collected from government reports and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics. The paper concludes with a theoretical reflection of East Asian pension policies and a diagnosis of the distinct challenges confronted by each of the various pension patterns.

Public awareness of poverty as a determinant of health: survey results from 23 countries

We aim to examine (1) variations in the public awareness of poverty as a determinant of health and (2) associations of individual and macro level factors with awareness. Analyses are based on the International Social Survey Programme. Data stem from 23 countries (N=37,228) that were assigned to six welfare states. Sociodemographic, socio-economic, and health-related factors were considered as individual level characteristics. Gross domestic product, relative poverty rate, Gini coefficient, and magnitude of health inequalities were additionally introduced as macro level factors. About 47% of the respondents in all countries agreed with the statement that people suffer from severe health problems because they are poor (range 30-77%). Multilevel analyses reveal that awareness was least pronounced in Liberal, East European, and East Asian welfare regimes. Moreover, women, older adults, respondents with low education and income, as well as poor health were more likely to show awareness. There is a need to raise public awareness of the adverse health effects of poverty as the public opinion can be an important driver of political will on health and social issues.

East Asian welfare regime: obsolete ideal-type or diversified reality

ABSTRACTThe paper asks if East Asian welfare regimes are still productivist and Confucian? And, have they developed public care policies? The literature is split on the first question but (mostly) confirmative on the second. Care has to a large, but insufficient extent, been rolled out in the region. Political science studies tend to conclude that the region has left the old legacies behind and are now welfare states comparable to European states including them either in the conservative type (e.g. Japan), the liberal type (e.g. Korea) or even as a tendency in the Nordic type (e.g. China), while studies focusing on outcomes or causal links tend to suggest that legacies prevail, but there is (nearly) consensus that Confucianism exercises great influence in the whole region.

Public Satisfaction with the Health System and Popular Support for State Involvement in an East Asian Welfare Regime: Health Policy Legitimacy of Hong Kong

AbstractThe legitimacy of social policies has gained increasing attention in the past decade, against the backdrop of fiscal austerity and retrenchment in many nations. Policy legitimacy encompasses public preferences for the underlying principles of policies and the actual outcomes as perceived by citizens. Scholarly knowledge concerning the legitimacy of health policy – a major element of modern social policy architecture – is, unfortunately, limited. This article seeks to extend the scholarly debates on health policy legitimacy from the West to Hong Kong, a member of the East Asian welfare state cluster. A bi‐dimensional definition of health policy legitimacy – encompassing both public satisfaction with the health system and the normative expectation as to the extent of state involvement in health care – is adopted. Based on analysis of data collected from a telephone survey of adult Hong Kong citizens between late 2014 and early 2015, the findings of this study demonstrate a fairly high level of satisfaction with the territory's health system, but popular support for government responsibility presents a clear residual characteristic. The study also tests the self‐interest thesis and the ideology thesis – major theoretical frameworks for explaining social policy legitimacy – in the Hong Kong context. Egalitarian ideology and trust in government are closely related to both public satisfaction with the system and popular support for governmental provision of care. However, the self‐interest thesis receives partial support. The findings are interpreted in the context of Hong Kong's health system arrangements, while implications for the territory's ongoing health policy reform are discussed.

Varieties of familialism: Comparing four southern European and East Asian welfare regimes

The aim of this article is to articulate the concepts of familialism and defamilialization as well as their indicators to assess whether and how welfare states, or regimes, differ not only in the degree to which they are defamilialized but also in the specific familialism form. In other words, it assesses whether family responsibility in a given area (and its gender dimension) is only assumed without public policy support or, on the contrary, whether it is actively enforced by laws or supported by income transfers and time allocation. The same diversification also exists for the opposite concept, defamilialization, which may happen through positive, direct or indirect policy interventions or because of the lack of such interventions, encouraging recourse to the market. The article shows that when considering these distinctions in the analyses, the profiles of countries that are usually generically described as ‘familialistic welfare states’, such as Italy and Spain in Europe or Japan and Korea in East Asia, and their similarities and differences partly differ from those that emerge when considering only a simplified familialism – defamilialization dichotomy, in so far both familialism and defamilialization may occur, and be combined, through distinct means, offering, therefore, also different options.

Familialisation Effects of the State Welfare: Focused on the National Health Insurances in S. Korea and Taiwan

The national health insurances in Korea and Taiwan have maintained the dependent system that includes the insureds and their families. These two cases explicitly exemplify the familialism in East Asian welfare regime. However, comparing the two systems in detail, we can easily note the variation in their familialisation effects despite similar family realities in the two societies. To explain why Korea and Taiwan adopted the NHI of different institutional arrangements, this article focuses on the historical combination of the state's political and fiscal concerns and families' rational choice, which led to the variation in family policy.

Looking to the east and the west: the double-attachment strategy used by the Hong Kong government to develop welfare to work measures for lone parents

This article discusses how the Hong Kong government used a double-attachment strategy to develop welfare to work measures for lone parents; and demonstrates how this discussion could contribute to the study of the cultural and political economy perspectives on East Asian welfare regimes. It shows that the Hong Kong government developed welfare to work measures with reference not only to the New Deal for Lone Parents in the UK, but also to certain traditional Chinese principles. In view of the Hong Kong government's attempt to attach its welfare policies to its own tradition and to the thinking of Western world, it is argued that both cultural and political economy perspectives are significant in the study of East Asian welfare regimes. Moreover, it is important to have a realistic understanding of the uniqueness of East Asian countries in the ways they organize welfare even though there are similarities with Western countries.

East Asian Welfare Regimes: An Analysis about the Effectiveness and Sustainability of the Developmental Welfare State Model Focused on ANICs

East Asian Welfare Regimes: An Analysis about the Effectiveness and Sustainability of the Developmental Welfare State Model Focused on ANICs

Defamilisation of Twenty-Two Countries: Its Implications for the Study of East Asian Welfare Regime

Two analytical tasks have been conducted in this article. The first is to construct a defamilisation typology that covers eighteen OECD members and four tiger economies (namely Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore). The second is to demonstrate this typology's contribution to the debate on the existence of two essential preconditions for the development of an all-encompassing East Asian welfare regime: (1) the existence of significant differences in the welfare systems between the East Asian countries and the non-East Asian OECD countries; and (2) the existence of significant similarities in the welfare systems of the East Asian countries.

East Asian welfare model refocus? A case study on economic support for the elderly living alone in Taiwan

This article argues that the concept of the East Asian welfare regime can be further developed by examining the changing role of the family in welfare provision. Beginning with a brief literature review of the East Asian welfare model, the family has been regarded as the main welfare provider among East Asian societies. Nevertheless, from a policy‐centred perspective, the oversimplified picture of the East Asian welfare model does not reveal how families actually perform in welfare provision or how the dynamic change in the welfare mix for vulnerable groups under the welfare regime has been accommodated. This article presents a case study and shows that while most elderly people in Taiwan still live with their children, who are also their main means of support, a significant number of them are living alone and that much of the economic support they used to receive from nongovernmental organisation now comes from the state.

End of the Era of Productivist Welfare Capitalism? Diverging Welfare Regimes in East Asia

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of recent transformations in East Asian welfare regimes, applying a ‘real-typical’ perspective, based on the ‘productivist welfare capitalism’ thesis of Ian Holliday (2000). Unlike Western welfare-state regimes in which the politics of austerity has dominated, the politics of welfare expansion has been noticeable in East Asian welfare regimes. This paper will analyse whether these changes have fundamentally dismantled the productivist feature where social policy is subordinate to economic objectives. While the trajectories are different depending on different political institutional contexts, this study shows that there are two strong signs that these states are moving out of their productivist nature and also that they are in the process of establishing their own welfare states. Japan seems to still be a productivist welfare-state regime struggling to accommodate rapid socio-economic changes, whereas Korea is a welfare state regime with strong liberal characteristics via modern welfare politics. Since the needs for social policy expansion in China correspond to economic and political needs, the productivist feature has been significantly weakened. However, this study argues that these transitory welfare regimes are in critical stages of formulating their new welfare regimes and that welfare politics based on contingent events could affect the future trajectories of these regimes.

The Contributions of the Health Decommodification Typologies to the Study of the East Asian Welfare Regime

AbstractSince Esping‐Andersen presented the three worlds of welfare typology thesis, the study of the classification of welfare regimes has been dominated by his work and the debates surrounding it. This article is concerned with two important responses to his work. The first response is the development of welfare typologies based on the principle of decommodification. The second response is the concern that East Asian countries are underrepresented in the 18 members of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) studied by Esping‐Andersen. As a result, there are calls for expanding the scope of the studies on the classification of welfare regimes to those in East Asia.This article makes contributions to these two responses by presenting two analytical tasks. The first task is to develop two health decommodification typologies based on two different methods (cluster analysis and Esping‐Andersen's index‐based regime construction). Both of them cover the 18 OECD members studied by Esping‐Andersen and four tiger economies (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore). The second task is to demonstrate that the two health decommodification typologies provide important information for the debate on the existence of two essential preconditions for the development of an all‐encompassing East Asian welfare regime, namely the existence of significant differences in the welfare systems between the East Asian countries and the 18 OECD countries studied by Esping‐Andersen (1990) and the existence of significant similarities in the welfare systems between East Asian countries.

Social Investment Policies in Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Korea

Abstract This paper compares the social investment policy reforms that have been introduced by the two Anglo-Saxon liberal welfare regimes of Canada and Australia and the two East Asian welfare regimes of Japan and South Korea since the 1990s. The paper examines the causes of these social policy changes, and asks why these seemingly different contexts produce such similar policy idea. While all four countries share similar broad ideational template and language of social investment, they differ in terms of their target groups and policy instruments. Whereas Canada and Australia have focused their social investment policies on children through ECEC (what I call an “invest in the future” model); Japan and South Korea have approached social investment from a more general human capital and economic activation perspective (what I call a “human capital activation” model). As a result, social investment policies in these countries have targeted more broadly on children, women, and the elderly. I argue that these differences in social investment approaches stem from the differences in their social, political and economic contexts, and the political economic legacies.