Productivist Welfare Research Articles

Forgotten Concepts of Korea’s Welfare State: Productivist Welfare Capitalism and Confucianism Revisited in Family Policy Change

Abstract Understanding the dominant principle(s) of a welfare regime has been the “higher-level” objective of welfare state analysis. East Asian welfare states are no exception, and thus many contributions have sought to understand the welfare state order of these countries. In this article, we consider the development and current architecture of family policies at the center of welfare regime debate for the case of South Korea. Through this analysis we aim to critically assess current assumptions that both original foundations—productivist welfare capitalism and Confucianism—are theoretically useless for understanding the current welfare state and its development. Instead, this article argues that productivism remains at the heart of family policy in South Korea. The repositioning of productivism, however, and the related focus on social reproduction in the welfare state project, have led to most of the changes introduced to the detriment of Confucianism.

Institutional Arrangement on Welfare Regime in Indonesia: How Does Indonesia Maintain Its Health Care Policy

In the last decade, Indonesia has successfully reduced the poverty rate from 11.96% in 2012 to 9.22% at the end of 2020. However, the rate of inequality in Indonesia is considered the highest within the region. Therefore, it is pivotal for Indonesia to strengthen and expand its welfare system in order to overcome the inequality. This paper aims to examine the institutional arrangement of welfare regime in Indonesia especially the health care policy. This paper implement qualitative method by examine secondary resource such as journals, articles and government report to gain understanding about institutional arrangement on welfare system in Indonesia. Result shows that population coverage of health care is shifting gradually from partial group of population to all of the citizens especially by the existence of national health insurance. The source of funding is risk-pooling rather than self-help. It indicates that government of Indonesia embrace inclusive productivist welfare as its institutional arrangement.

The complementary roles between clientelism and familism in social policy development

AbstractWhat drives social policy development? Most of the literature addressing this issue focuses on the economic crisis and the increase in left power as its causation. On the basis of the Indonesian case, this paper engages in a debate about the clouts of clientelism and familial ethics in shaping social policy path development. This article claims that the quick replacement of productivist welfare regimes with the more inclusive system after Asian Financial Crisis is motivated by increased elites' interest in repositioning their clientelistic network within a public institution. This is occurring while familial precepts are being used as effective moral politics in encouraging kinship networks to internalize social risks during the regime replacement process. Overall, the case of Indonesia reflects the common characteristic of welfare regimes development in East Asian countries where efforts to modernize social policy are conditioned under a situation where democracy is not well‐established and the post‐modern family structure has not fully matured either. Consequently, the development of social policy to a large extent is still confined within a huge clientelistic influence and implemented under the familial ideology. This situation has ultimately retarded welfare state development.

Productive engagement and ageing in productivist welfare regimes: questing for an age-friendly city in Hong Kong

AbstractThe population aged 65 years and above in Hong Kong is projected to rise from 15 per cent in 2014 to 38.4 per cent in 2069. Therefore, the quest for creating age-friendly conditions and the promotion of active ageing has become a priority for the Hong Kong Government and stakeholders in the city. Using a cross-national comparative framework for productive engagement in later life, this article examines the predictors of productive engagement (perceived voluntary engagement) in two districts (the Islands and Tsuen Wan) of Hong Kong – a typical productivist welfare regime in Asia. Data were collected through a social survey to ascertain the perception of an age-friendly city and active ageing in 2016 and 2018 from 1,638 persons aged 60 years and older. The results indicate some differences in the perception of the key determinants in both districts, but the factors associated with productive engagement were consistent, namely social atmosphere, social provisions and the built environment. The findings are discussed within the broader discourse on social gerontology, age-friendly cities and productivist welfare regimes.

Labour market experience, educational attainment and self-reported happiness: crowding-out amongst young people in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Recent literature on education and work well recognises the ‘crowding-out perspective’ of how higher education expansion impacts the labour market experience of young people with different educational levels. However, the relationship between the labour market experience and young people’s self-reported happiness remains less well understood. This paper examines whether a ‘crowding out’ effect occurs amongst post-secondary degree-holders on the self-reported happiness of young people (aged 16-34) amidst increasing difficulties during their school-to-work transition. Drawing on a city-wide online survey in a leading global city, Hong Kong, statistical analysis shows that contrary to the mainstream ‘crowding out perspective’, self-reported happiness is lower amongst young people with high rather than low educational attainment. However, in the absence of a ‘happiness premium’ of educational attainment, young people in Hong Kong with secondary degrees or below are much more sensitive to adverse labour market experiences, such as unemployment, high job pressure and long working hours. No similar moderating effect of educational attainment is found on the relationship between the self-reported happiness of young people and regular work shifts. The implications of these findings on the ‘crowding out perspective’ for youth development policy within East Asia and Hong Kong productivist welfare paradigm are discussed.

The Influence of Civil Society on Welfare Expansion in East Asia: A Comparative Study of Singapore and South Korea


 
 
 East Asian countries are often characterized as productivist welfare states whose social policies are subordinated to economic growth. However, in the past decade, public pressure for welfare expansion (or welfarism) has built up across all East Asian countries – including China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Therefore, this paper asks: How has pro-welfare civil society influenced welfare expansion in East Asia over the past decade? Addressing this research question will help fill the theoretical gap on the relationship between contemporary pro-welfare civil society activism and welfare state expansion in East Asian countries. I address this theoretical gap by devising the New Power Approach which argues that pro-welfare civil society is the main driver of welfare expansions when the incumbent government is conservative. By implication, the stronger the pro-welfare civil society in generating political impetus for reforms, the greater the extent of welfare expansion in the country with a conservative government.
 
 

Mobilising the welfare machine: Questioning the resurgent socialist concern in China’s Public Rental Housing Scheme

This study examined the resurgence of public housing provision in China since 2007 by situating it in a broad welfare regime analysis. Based on insights from Productivist Welfare Capitalism (Holliday, 2000. Productivist Welfare Capitalism, 706‒723) and Graduated Sovereignty (Ong, 2006a.Neoliberalism as exception), we have sought to shed new light on the productivist approach through a study on Chinese cases. Using the examples of Chongqing and Nanjing, we argue in the study that the proactive action of the state to further commodify labour power has led to the flexible de‐articulation and re‐articulation of welfare and citizenship in an ongoing process of de‐territorialisation and re‐territorialisation of various segments of the population that own parcels of land. Another aspect of flexibility in the welfare regime is the double segmentation of population and territory, which is also contingent on, and subject to, alteration upon government decision.

Democratization, post-industrialization, and East Asian welfare capitalism: the politics of welfare state reform in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan

This review article provides an overview of the scholarship on the establishment and reform of East Asian welfare capitalism. The developmental welfare state theory and the related productivist welfare regime approach have dominated the study of welfare states in the region. This essay, however, shows that a growing body of research challenges the dominant literature. We identify two key driving factors of welfare reform in East Asia, namely democratization and post-industrialization; and discuss how these two drivers have undermined the political and functional underpinnings of the post-war equilibrium of the East Asian welfare/production regime. Its unfolding transformation and the new politics of social policy in the region challenge the notion of “East Asian exceptionalism”, and we suggest that recent welfare reforms call for a better integration of the region into the literature of advanced political economies to allow for cross-fertilization between Eastern and Western literatures.

The Paradox of Integration: Work-Integration Social Enterprises (WISE) and Productivist Welfare Regime in Hong Kong

After the Asian Financial Crisis, the government of Hong Kong embraced the model of work-integration social enterprise (WISE) to sustain its facilitative and productivist welfare regime. Using the WISE of Pro-Love for marginalized women as a case study, the article examines the meaning of employment and social disadvantage in the organization. The ethnographic data reveal that while the WISE encourages women to participate in the paid labor market, it constructs employment in the social enterprise as part-time jobs for supplementary family income, restricts the extension of social networks for the female workers, and reinforces the cultural stereotypes of marginalized women. The study reflects on the mechanisms of the project of WISE in the welfare contexts of Hong Kong, and argues that programs targeted at labor participation cannot be automatically translated into reduction of exclusion in other domains. Long-term planning, policy coordination, and social advocacy are necessary to achieve social integration.

A comparative study of social assistance systems in Macao and Hong Kong

This article compares social assistance systems in Macao and Hong Kong. It finds that Macao delivers a higher level of social assistance benefits, whereas Hong Kong has a larger group of social assistance beneficiaries. The Hong Kong Government spends a larger amount on social assistance provision and imposes tougher controls on the recipients, compared to Macao. The results of the comparison indicate that Macao and Hong Kong differ markedly in the type of productivist welfare regime they belong and challenge the assertion that the two welfare systems form a distinct welfare model.

In Defense of a Democratic Productivist Welfare State

In this article, I defend a democratic form of the productivist welfare state. I argue that this form of the state can best cope, theoretically and practically, with the diversity of deeply morally pluralistic democratic societies for two reasons. First, the justification of this form of the state rests solely on general facts about human nature, basic human needs, and efficiency considerations in a world of moderately scarce resources. Second, this state does not aim to promote a specific view of justice, but human flourishing more generally, expressed in terms of individual and collective productivity. The proposed democratic productivist welfare state supports its citizens up to the level that allows them to develop and exercise their talents and abilities without providing incentives for free riding. I argue that, under the specific empirical circumstances that I describe, in particular certain informational restrictions concerning the precise productive and destructive capacities of the members of society in practice and the soundness of the Aristotelian principle, this goal may best be achieved in practice by the introduction of an unconditional basic income at subsistence level, if society is sufficiently developed economically to provide such an income. On productivist grounds, such an unconditional subsistence income also addresses, pragmatically and partially, the problem of historical injustices against the weakest members of society and provides all group members with the means for democratic participation.

East Asia in transition: re-examining the East Asian welfare model using fuzzy sets

ABSTRACTEast Asia’s economic and social structures came under pressure in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the productivist welfare capitalism (PWC) thesis faced a fundamental challenge. This paper explores the veracity of the PWC thesis by exploring six social policy fields, including education, health care services, family, old-age pensions, housing and protective labour market policy, in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan using fuzzy-set ideal type analysis (FsITA). The findings suggest that it is inaccurate to talk about one single, homogeneous welfare model in East Asia. Despite persistent similarities in regard to their cultural foundations, cases in Greater China and East Asia have distinctive social policy development trajectories often combining ‘productive’ and ‘protective’ policies in unique ways.

Reforms of Retirement Policies: Three Common Paths in Aging in Japan and Korea

ABSTRACTFaced with an unparalleled rate of population aging, Japan and Korea have been reforming their retirement policies. To date, however, while the age of mandatory retirement has increased, employees continue to face significant decreases in compensation and other working conditions, typically at age 60 in Japan and age 55 in Korea. Three factors have contributed to shaping the path of the policy reforms in both the countries, including (1) the productivist welfare regimes, (2) the structure of the labor market for young workers, and (3) seniority-based wage and compensation systems.

J. Doling and R. Ronald (eds): Housing East Asia: socioeconomic and demographic challenges

This book is a strong addition to comparative housing research. The authors of individual chapters are all recognized experts and several are prominent in the field. Each chapter of the book demonstrates rigorous scholarship. While the first chapter of this book offers a theoretic framework, the rest covers nine major economic bodies in the region with one chapter exclusively devoted to one country/region: mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand. Housing regimes in East Asia are quite diverse. Nonetheless, they are alike in terms of forms and motivations of government intervention (Chen et al. 2014). The editors of this book, John Doling and Richard Ronald, show in the introductory chapter that national housing systems in East Asia share an important common to use housing development as a means to drive urban development and economic growth. Particularly, the editors elaborate the rationales of why the provision of owner-occupied housing is a pillar of welfare under productivist welfare regimes in East Asia. Through promoting asset-based welfare among homeowners, East Asian governments expect the family asset can function as social security and the building up of ‘‘asset-based security’’ can preserve self-sufficiency and reduce the citizens’ demand to develop onerous and costly welfare states. On one hand, the asset-based welfare philosophy reflects the ideology of productivist welfare capitalism. Holliday (2000) introduces the term ‘‘productivist welfare capitalism’’ by stressing the observation that social welfare policy is subordinated to and defined by the growth-oriented economic policy in East Asia. The asset-based welfare practice, however, also carries features of developmental welfare capitalism, which sees social welfare as social investment (Midgley and Tang 2001). Doling and Ronald, however, do not attempt to discern the differences between productivism and developmentalism and simultaneously use them as ‘‘two underlying logics’’ (Doling and Ronald 2014: 24).

The Korean Welfare state and Productivist Welfare Capitalism: A Historical Analysis of the Korean National Health Insurance System

The Korean Welfare state and Productivist Welfare Capitalism: A Historical Analysis of the Korean National Health Insurance System

The Contributions of the Studies of Health Care Systems to the Examination of the Productivist Welfare Capitalism Thesis

This article demonstrates how the study of the health care systems in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan contributes to the analysis of the “productivist welfare capitalism” thesis. It focuses on examining the validity of the arguments derived from the discussions of this thesis. The examination is based on different sources of empirical evidence, namely the population health outcomes of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea and the data provided by a health care typology that covers these three tiger economies and 14 OECD countries.

Liberalization, Democratization and Korea's housing welfare regime

South Korea (hereafter Korea) has long been regarded as a productivist welfare regime, reflecting the subordination of the provision of social goods and services to economic development. Korea has experienced considerable liberalization and democratization of its economy and society in recent decades. Although the housing system has become more market orientated as a consequence of the liberalization of the economy and there is a greater emphasis on meeting housing needs associated with greater democracy, Korea's housing system is neither a social democratic housing welfare regime nor a liberal housing welfare regime. Instead the developmentalist state has modified housing policies to respond to the economic challenges of the 1990s and 2000s and to greater democratization, while continuing as a productivist housing welfare regime. This paper identifies the need to revisit key concepts in the welfare regime literature, in particular decommodification and the division of labour between state, market and family in housing delivery to expand the international applicability of welfare regime theory to Asia.

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 Resilience of Personal Economy of Ageing: An Examination of the Productivist Welfare Capitalism of Hong Kong

The personal dimension of ageing is critical but is generally taken for granted in the study of ageing theories. In Hong Kong there is the practice of a personal economy of ageing and it plays the role of the informal security regime1 1 The term regime is adopted from Esping-Anderson's (1990 Esping-Anderson, G. 1990. The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, which refers to the philosophy, principle and overall design and outcome of a welfare system (p. 2). In the words of Esping-Anderson, it denotes “the fact that in the relation between state and economy a complex of legal and organizational features are systemically interwoven” (Esping-Anderson, 1995, p. 2) as can be found in the South Asia sub-continent. This paper argues that Hong Kong's welfare capitalism consists of both a productivist welfare regime and an informal security regime. Each for his own and god for us all. (Benjamin Disralie)

澳門社會福利模式: 一個生産主導福利模式

本文的目標是分析澳門社會福利體系的特徵及探討它的模式。它的特徵包括偏低水平的社會福利開支，福利混合主義之供應模式，較低水平的社會權發展，有限度減少社會分層化，福利發展主要被政治經濟因素所主導。其實，澳門的社會福利體系擁有其他東亞地區福利體制之主要特徵，故它亦屬於生産主導福利模式。 This article is aimed to outline the features of Macao's social welfare system and identify its welfare model. The analysis shows that the welfare system is characterized by its low social welfare expenditure, mixed economy of welfare, underdevelopment of social rights, restricted impact on social stratification and the dominant role of the political-economic factors in social policy-making. It is argued that Macao's social welfare system has shared most of key features of other East Asian welfare regimes and therefore it can be regarded as a productivist welfare model.