Welfare Reform in East Asia: Towards Workfare

by Chak Kwan Chan (Editor), Kinglun Ngok (Editor)

Overview

In many Western countries, social welfare payments are increasingly being made conditional on recipients doing voluntary work or attending job training courses, a system known as "welfare-to-work" or "workfare". Although social welfare in Asia is very different to the West, with much smaller social welfare budgets, a strong self-reliance and a much higher dependency on family networks to provide support, the workfare approach is also being adopted in many Asian countries. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of how welfare reform around work is implemented in leading East Asian.

Based on the experiences of seven East Asian economies - including China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau - this book critically analyses current trends; the social, economic and political factors which lead to the implementation of workfare; compares the similarities and differences of workfare in the different polities and assesses their effectiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781136680052
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/12/2012
Series:	Comparative Development and Policy in Asia
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Chak Kwan Chan is Reader in Social Policy at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Kinglun Ngok is Professor and Director of the Institute for Social Policy, Centre for Public Administration, School of Government at Sun Yat-sen University, China. They recently co-authored Social Policy in China: Development and Well-Being.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Introduction 1. Understanding Workfare in Western and East Asian Welfare States Part 2: Workfare in Seven East Asian Economies 2. Workfare in Mainland China: A Reaction to Welfare Dependency? 3. Workfare in Hong Kong 4. From Workfare to Cash for All: The Politics of Welfare Reform in Macau 5. Workfare in Taiwan: From Social Assistance to Unemployment Absorber 6. Workfare in Japan 7. Workfare in South Korea: Delivering Unemployment Benefits in the Developmental Welfare State 8. Workfare in Singapore Part 3: Conclusion 9. Workfare in East Asia: Development & Characteristics

Editorial Reviews

"This well-argued book will be a valuable contribution to the fields of social welfare and East Asia, and will be an informative read for students and scholars in those fields."

Aiqun Hu PhD
Arkansas State University - Journal of International and Global Studies

From the Publisher