Aspalter asserts that the belief that the development of high standard welfare states is primarily based on the ideology that pro-welfare, mostly leftwing, parties dominate welfare state literature and common thought in the Western world. Instead, in this examination of the welfare states of East Asia, Aspalter and his contributors show that they grew as naturally as they did in most Western countries, but that the reasons for this are other than pro-welfare ideologies. The five welfare states--Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore--are residual welfare states with low...

Aspalter provides six country studies of the most developed welfare state systems in East Asia-Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic of China. He applies a political approach to examine the causal determinants of welfare state development, such as:

-historical factors

-political systems

-party systems

-the politics of legitimization

-the impact of constitutions

-state structures

-elections

-social movements

A common trend in East Asian welfare state politics appears throughout this...

East Asian societies are changing rapidly, and one of the most important facets of this transformation is population the ageing. of society. "Active ageing" is one of the few concepts available today to effectively address the problems arising from a highly-aged and, particularly in East Asia, fast-ageing society, offering a new social policy paradigm to redirect and innovate new social policies, particularly social services, social transfers, social regulations and laws, towards more investment in and support of the fast rising number of olderelderly citizens.

This book focuses on...

In recent years, government and policymakers around the world have shifted their attention away from money-oriented, supply-side economics to institutional economics and people-oriented social and economic development. Issues such as poverty reduction, win-win solutions and strategies in social policy and their implementation, universalization, and a variety of new large-scale conditional cash transfers programs have become ever-present in the global discussion about development and social policy.

This book provides win-win strategies for social policies on the ground, as developed and...

This book addresses the global need for more comparative studies on health policy and health care systems, given the rise in recent decades of societal aging, modern mass diseases, economic globalization, and resulting permanent fiscal austerity of governments which have fundamentally altered the status quo of health care systems.

The book examines the healthcare experiences of the most developed countries in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore) and compares these with four of the most important health care systems in Europe (UK, France, Germany and Italy). Focusing on...

For the last two decades, major Asian economies have successfully kept their economic growth momentum going. Now, as these economies are entering a new phase of economic growth, more attention is being paid to their respective states of social development, especially the provision and the expansion of social security and, in particular, health care. Academic study of the development of health care in developing countries has been for the most part neglected by the literature, and in-depth country case studies that are directly comparable on a one-to-one basis have not yet been conducted in...