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AbstractSocial expenditure analyses have always been a central topic of research for welfare states in Western Europe, with more institutional approaches added to such studies later in time. Research on welfare states in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, on the contrary, has a shorter history, and attention has been paid more on understanding politico‐economic institutions on a case‐by‐case basis, instead of focusing on social expenditure causes and dynamics. This study aims to contribute to the literature with an up‐to‐date comparative perspective in the study of public social expenditures in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, in a two‐fold way. First, after discussing briefly the state of art of research on welfare in East Asia, descriptive data on public social expenditure trends in Korea, Japan and Taiwan are presented in comparison with industrialized welfare states in the West. Second, a pooled cross‐sectional regression analysis for panel data is run to uncover the determinants of social expenditure in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. A new comparative dataset has been constructed by merging secondary data on public social expenditures and socio‐economic and political variables made publicly available by the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Taiwanese national government. Results seem to suggest that there is a serious need of better conceptualizing political determinants of welfare expenditures in East Asia, since they will probably represent the most important field for welfare development in these countries in years to come.

INTERACT - Researching Third Country Nationals' Integration as a Three-way Process - Immigrants, Countries of Emigration and Countries of Immigration as Actors of Integration ; Emigrants from the Korean peninsula are one of the biggest migrant communities in the world, but yet little is known internationally about their characteristics or differences by geographic area. This explorative paper attempts to shed light on overseas Koreans and their classifications, and on the ways in which the state (mainly the South Korean government) deals with them. Generally speaking, it is possible to distinguish overseas Koreans into Kyopos (in the Western world and in Japan), Koryos (based in the ex-Soviet Union), and Chosuns (the Korean diaspora in China). While the South Korean state tends to only address their situation with a visa policy upon those returning to their homeland, NGOs and other private organizations are more active in addressing the needs of the Korean diasporas abroad. ; INTERACT is co-financed by the European University Institute and the European Union.

AbstractChina as a welfare system is not yet well understood in social policy circles, despite being a well‐studied case in public administration and political science. Would this party‐state care to commit for its citizens' welfare? For many, associating the idea of a welfare state with China is still something to be frowned upon. Most available literature, especially in the English language, describes social policies in China as residual, unequally distributed, strongly dependent on local finances, prone to social dumping—especially for rural residents and migrant workers—paternalistic, disregarding social needs and so on. Yet, we believe that the social dumping practices of the 1980s and 1990s are now a thing of the past. As the government has taken a decidedly pro‐welfare stance since the 2000s, it could be more reasonable to identify different historical phases through which the welfare system took shape in China. We identify and discuss three stages in particular: the 'iron rice bowl' phase of socialist China (1949–1978), the welfare shedding resulting from China's opening up to the market (1979–2002), and the 'social policy era' characterised by major welfare expansion (2002–2020).

AbstractChina is undergoing important reforms in its welfare system, and some scholars agree that a new 'social policy era' took place in the 2000s–2010s. Although welfare development theories—typically, the industrialisation thesis and the power resources approach—are well established in social policy research, welfare change and its determinants in China are still poorly understood in international literature. Making use of official statistics at the provincial level, this study examines whether industrialisation is associated with welfare development in China during the 'social policy era' (2000–2019). We contribute to welfare development literature by, first, measuring welfare effort in China while addressing comparability issues (the 'dependent variable problem'); and, secondly, testing the industrialisation thesis, amongst others, through a fixed‐effects time‐series‐cross‐section data analysis on provincial‐level statistics covering 30 provinces during 20 time points (2000–2019). Results show that the industrialisation theory is indeed important for welfare development in China, but several less‐developed provinces also experienced substantial improvement in their welfare spending irrespective of their local revenues, suggesting that redistribution at the level of the central government and political reform are increasingly important topics for future welfare studies in China.

AbstractConsidering its conservative past, South Korea is undergoing an unprecedented turn to the left. Since priority was given to economic growth from the 1960s until the beginning of the 1990s, a close alliance between big business and government has characterised the country's labour market. Since the 1997 financial crisis, however, two decades of liberal and conservative governments have pushed a neoliberal agenda of labour market flexibilisation, which has resulted in growing inequality in a dualised labour market and left the trade unions in a marginal role. Following a rapid turn of events that led to the impeachment of conservative president Park Geun‐hye, left‐leaning President Moon Jae‐in seems determined to roll back this legacy of labour oppression with the strong support of trade unions and young voters. His administration is pushing for policy change with a series of expansionary active labour market policies aimed at promoting stability and full‐time employment. This article highlights the social‐democratic character of these reforms and the constraints in implementing them.

Objective:This study aims to evaluate the impact of a community development program meant to improve living standards of poor rural families through income generating activities (IGAs) based on conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Doti, Nepal.Method:We use cross-sectional field data from a sample of 392 families representative of the village development committees of Pokhari, Ladagada, and Gajari. After running a propensity score analysis to increase comparability between the treatment and comparison groups, we compare mean scores on a series of chosen outcome variables via t-test analyses.Results:Results suggest that, although improvements in family income and living standards are felt subjectively, crop production might have worsened as a result of IGAs, suggesting the possibility of a trade-off and of long-term effects.Discussion and Implications:This article has implications for research and practice in community development programs and data collection and evaluation of such programs.

AbstractSocial investment policies advocate for more and better jobs by supporting families' work‐life balance and investing in human capital. But do they really help to boost employment prospects for women? Earlier literature suggests a positive relationship, but not enough attention has been paid to the type of employment, or to who the actual beneficiaries of these measures are. This article combines ISSP survey data with OECD and national data in a multilevel analysis to determine whether social investment policies benefit female employment, improve job prospects, and apply to all women irrespective of their educational level. We find that training and childcare policies are associated with higher employment levels, however, the claim that social investment increases chances for better job prospects finds little empirical support. These findings suggest that active labour market and childcare policies are associated with more women's employment, but they might still be following a push to 'just work'.

Social investment policies have enjoyed prominence during recent welfare reforms across the OECD world, and yet there is insufficient long-term strategy for their success. Reviewing labour market, family and education policies, this edited collection analyses the emergence of social investment policies in both Europe and East Asia. Adopting a life course perspective and examining both public and private investments, this book addresses key contemporary policy issues including care, learning, work, social mobility and inequalities. Providing original observations, this seminal text explores the roads and barriers towards effective social investment policies, derives practical social policy implications and highlights important lessons for future policymaking