Social Welfare Systems in East Asia:A Comparative Analysis Including Private Welfare

This paper is an overview of the social welfare systems of five EastAsian countries, namely Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong andSingapore. It analyses the overall costs of welfare as well as incomedistribution aspects, based on both aggregate data and a programme-byprogrammereview of their welfare states (presented in annex). Privatewelfare is introduced in the analysis in two ways. First, it is argued thatsometimes welfare programmes are characterised by a mix of public andprivate interventions, along the three dimensions of provision, financeand decision. Second, this study explores the welfare roles played byprivate actors alone, namely enterprises and families. The mainconclusions are that (i) Hong Kong and Singapore’s public welfareexpenditures will remain very low as long as they continue to relymainly upon privately financed welfare programmes, (ii) Korea andTaiwan’s public welfare expenditures will grow significantly in thecoming years as their populations age, their old age pensionprogrammes mature and their various insurance schemes are extendedto marginal occupational groups, (iii) Japan’s ageing problem iscompounded by the weakening of the family as a provider of welfare,which will put an extra burden on her welfare state, (iv) Japan andKorea’s enterprises are challenged in their chief welfare role, namelysecuring employment, which will also put an extra burden on theirwelfare states and (v) the main income equalising factor in East Asia isthe very equal distribution of work across households, which is alsothreatened by the weakening of enterprise and family welfare (i.e.,respectively rising unemployment and decreasing income pooling insidethe family).[...]