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"There is considerable scope for examining pension and healthcare together as a social protection system, and for regressed analytical studies, focusing on specific major issues of relevance in strengthening social protection. This book aims to fill the literature gap on social protection in East Asia by covering issues such as: pension and health care arrangements in depopulating high income countries of Japan and Korea; the challenges of pay-out phase in Defined Contribution (DC) arrangements in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore; extension of coverage of social protection schemes in China, India and Indonesia. The book also reviews social protection from a much wider perspective and extends coverage of social protection both in terms of the proportion of the population with excess to the social protection scheme, and the types of risks faced by the households and by society as a whole. The East Asia experience has both implications and lessons to be learnt for the rest of the world"--

The current global economic crisis has led to greater prominence for the issue of strengthening social protection systems in Asia. This paper analyzes the key factors determining and the possible avenues for strengthening social protection systems in Asia. The choice of an appropriate combination of avenues depends on the initial starting point, public policy objectives, institutional, fiscal, and other capabilities. Following introductory remarks, Section 2 discusses demographic and labor market trends in Asia. It stresses that rapid ageing and large, informal labor markets pose challenges for Asian social protection systems, while making the role of the state even more essential. This is followed in Section 3 by an overview of social security systems in Asia. The key point is that while there are fairly elaborate social security programs in Asia, primarily for formal sector employees, this does not necessarily imply that the schemes are well designed, have wide coverage, or are financially sustainable. Section 4 discusses four general avenues to strengthening social protection systems. These emphasize greater professionalism, parametric and systemic reforms, social assistance, and social pensions, as well as others such as microfinance institution-initiated pensions. The final section provides concluding observations. The global economic crisis provides a potential opportunity for strengthening social protection systems. However, the construction of multitiered social protection systems will require much greater professionalism, experimentation, political and organizational leadership, and vision.

Indonesia has embarked on a decentralization process with potentially far reaching implications for its fiscal system and political economy. This paper examines the role of property tax in fiscal decentralization in Indonesia. Currently, the property tax is essentially a central tax as far as design, valuation, collection (target based), and administration are concerned. The net revenue is fully shared with provinces and districts, though the basis of sharing is not fully transparent. This paper suggests that in order to increase the share of own-revenues of the regions, policymakers may consider permitting greater discretion to districts to set effective property tax rates, within the overall limits set by the central government. It is suggested that centralized administration be retained. Transforming property tax into a truly local tax, including local responsibility for valuation, is not currently recommended, but could be kept as a key long-term goal.