Income Transfers to the Elderly in East Asia: Testing Asian Values

This article examines the role of family and the state in relation to the living standards of the elderly in East Asia. It tries to test whether familial arrangement according to Confucian ethics, which are still taken seriously in East Asia, secures the minimum standard of living for the elderly. This article, first, examines the social policy institutions for the elderly in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. It argues that public policy in the region assumes the family as primarily responsible for elderly people's living standards. Secondly, this article analyses private and public income transfers to elderly households, based on micro-data sets for South Korea and Taiwan. It argues that private transfers do make important contributions to the income of the elderly households, particularly poorer households, while public transfers do not make any significant impact. This suggests that Confucian ethics are still working. Private transfers, however, fail to secure the minimum standards of living of the elderly. The elderly households are far more prone to poverty. The findings of this paper support the case for state action to protect the living standards of the elderly in East Asia.Public pensions, retirement policy, East Asia

Transforming the developmental welfare states in East Asia

This article attempts to explain changes and continuity in the developmental welfare states in Korea and Taiwan Province of China (hereafter Taiwan) within the East Asian context. It first elaborates two strands of welfare developmentalism (selective vs. inclusive), and establishes that the welfare state in those countries fell into the selective category of developmental welfare states before the Asian economic crisis of 1997. Secondly, this paper argues that the policy reform toward an inclusive welfare state in Korea and Taiwan was triggered by the need for structural reform in the economy. Lastly, this paper argues that the idea of an inclusive developmental welfare state should be explored in the wider context of economic and social development.Developmental Welfare State, Social Policy, Korea, Taiwan, East Asia

Unemployment and public work projects in Korea, 1998-2000

노트 : Reference Materials for the ADBI Seminar on Social Protection for the Poor in Asia and Latin America21-25 October 2002, Manil

Welfare reform and future challenges in the Republic of Korea

노트 : The author is at present Research Coordinator with the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) while on leave from Sung Kyun Kwan University, Seoul. He has published books and articles on East Asian social policy including recent paper, Globalization, unemployment and policy responses in Korea, in Global Social Policy, 2001, Vol. 1, No. 2. This paper is based on the ongoing UNRISD project, Social policy in a development context

Economic development and poverty reduction in Korea

노트 : This paper is to be presented at the RC 19 annual conference on ‘The Future of Social Citizenship: Politics, Citizenship and Outcome’, co-organized by the Institute for Future Studies and Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, 4-6 September 2008

Implications of Koreas Saemaul Undong for International Development Policy: A Structural Perspective

Development strategies based on neoliberal theories and good governance have failed to achieved clear outcomes. This paper examines the Saemaul Undong movement in Korea with the contention that it can provide a missing link between market- and state-oriented development policy. Saemaul Undong contributed to social and economic development in Korea not only as a self-help community movement but also as a mechanism of social inclusion. Its success was based on a social structure that was made more open to upward mobility by the land reform of the 1950s. A negative aspect of Saemaul Undong is that it was promoted by the government to mobilize political support for authoritarian President Park Chung Hee. In order to draw policy implications from Saemaul Undong for international development, it is necessary to consider the social and political context of the developing countries under consideration