EASP 5th Conference

Lessons from Western Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) - activation of workers aged 45+ in Taiwan

2008-10-28T18:31:31Z

In the West, along with economic and social changes, public expectations of older people's later life have experienced considerable changes. Significantly, 'active ageing' has become a popular discourse in current western societies. In terms of active ageing, activation of ageing labour forces was seen as a means of moderating the financial burden of pensions and social care systems and threatened of labour force shortages. Consequently, older workers are expected to increase their working years by enhancing their employability and productivity (Carmel et al., 2007:389). In the meantime, Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) were introduced as an integrated way to address older workers' employment difficulties. Four strategies were identified as the major methods to achieve its goals: training, private sector incentive programmes, direct employment programmes and services and sanctions (Kluve, 2006; OECD, 2006). So far, both positive and negative effects of ALMPs have been found. Positive effects of private sector incentive and job-search assistance programmes have been demonstrated (OECD, 2005) and unemployment rates have been reduced apparently (Kluve and Schmidt, 2002). However, critics also strongly argued that ALMPs ignored the importance of job quality and tended to recklessly push people to work in insecure and low-paid jobs (Carmel, 2007; OECD, 2005). As for Taiwan, due to sharp decreases in birth rates and higher life expectancy, the Taiwanese population was ageing rapidly. It is predicted that Taiwanese society will face crucial and similar challenges as the Western societies being experiencing now. For instance, the numbers of old (aged 65 +) and young (aged 0-14) will be equal by 2016; moreover, till 2025, gaps between these two age groups will be increased to 21% and 11% respectively. This research aimed to evaluate the effects and transformability of ALMPs in terms of several significant factors: social model and welfare ideologies, social and ageing culture, global economy and employment structures. In this paper, emphasis has been on an overall framework by using secondary data analysis and documentary analysis; meanwhile, an empirical work is in progress. Finally, lessons which the Western ALMPs could give to the Taiwanese labour market policies will be critically discussed and analysed.

Full paper download: Huang L_active labour market policies.pdf

Elderly Employment and its Promotion: A Comparison of Taiwan and Hong Kong

2008-10-28T18:33:29Z

Taiwan and Hong Kong has been an aging society. Concerns on the well-being and welfare of elderly, and its possible burden on the society and public finance have been a major concern in both societies. While most of the debates are on the improvement of retirement protection scheme and long-term care, relatively, lesser attention has been paid on elderly employment as an alternative for enhancing their socio-economic security. This paper will use Taiwan and Hong Kong as cases studies, discussing the background, the feasibilities and potentials of this alternative.

The two societies share some similarities: the weakening of family and kinship as a means of protection though filial piety is always emphasized in a Chinese society; rapid economic restructuring resulting in the hallowing of manufacturing sector and the increasing importance of service sectors; immature and ineffective public retirement protection system; stereotyping and hence discrimination of elderly but at the same time with stronger calling for an active and healthy aging for the elderly. All these explain the importance of elderly employment as a means to tackle elderly poverty, retirement protection and social inclusion of them through work.

Nevertheless, the elderly labor participation rates in both societies are still low, and policies to promote such alternative are still sporadic. The paper will outline and compare these policies. Making reference to similar strategies in other countries, we will discuss the possible suggestions in strengthening the policies in promoting elderly employment.

Job-seeking behaviors of clients of MLSGS-UR and related institutional arrangements in Shanghai

2008-10-28T18:35:03Z

There is much complexity of factors that have impacts on job-seeking behaviors of claimants of Minimum Living Standard Guarantee System for Urban Residents (MLSGS-UR). Institutional arrangements have effects on their job-seeking behaviors and decisions by means of their influences over individual subjective and cognitive variables. Using the methods of survey, interview and documentary analysis, this study firstly analyzes what subjective variables have statistically significant impact on the job-search intensity of clients of MLSGS-UR in Shanghai, and then explores the impacts of related institutional arrangements on job-seeking intensity, and finally, the author proposes some policy suggestions for improving MLSGS-UR.

Child Poverty and Maternal Employment in Korea in Comparative Perspective

2008-10-28T18:36:07Z

Child poverty policy has been paid attention as a social investment and preventive strategy recently. Especially, employment strategy tends to be more emphasized than simple income maintenance in social investment states and workfare discussions. Also, Studies about the effect of employment strategy find that maternal employment is more effective in reducing child poverty.

However, those studies fail to consider two points that can affect outcomes. One is the characteristics of labour market and the other is who provides care service. First, each state may have different level of wage gap or occupational segregation by gender and educational attainment, which result in different outcomes of "escape-from-poverty-through-work" strategy. Second, how care service is distributed among public, private and informal sector could have impact on the welfare of children through care service cost and stratification of service quality.

Concern about child poverty is increasing lately in Korea. Weak institutional welfare and increase of inequality, younger workers' unemployment and family dissolution in Korea has endangered household with children. Thus, in this paper, child poverty rate and trends are looked around first, and then the relationship between maternal work and child poverty is examined focusing on characteristics of labour market and care service provider.

As a result of analysis, first, households with children don't have higher risk of poverty than those without children, but poverty rate for households with pre-school children has been increasing slightly in 2000s in Korea. Second, maternal employment has lesser effect on poverty reduction in Korea relative to other OECD countries, which seems to result from higher wage gap by gender and large share of irregular and low pay jobs in mothers' work. Third, in case of care service, working parents depend highly on informal sector such as other family members and private sector in Korea, which leads to larger burden of care cost among low-income households. Therefore, not simply encouraging work, but gender equity policies as well as active labour market policies are needed to use maternal employment as a child poverty policy.

Full paper download: Kim W_child poverty and maternal employment.pdf

Employees' Parental Involvement and Parental Responsibility with the Benefit of Corporate Childcare Services

2008-10-28T18:38:20Z

The purpose of this research was to explore the employees' parental involvement and parental responsibility with the benefit of corporate childcare policy. Ten interviewees who were from double-career families were selected because they had at least one young child aged below 6 and were using childcare services provided by corporations. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Three issues were discussed in this paper:

A real balance between work and family? The purpose of corporate childcare services was to reduce employees' stress between work and family. Extend childcare time might release employee's working stress, however, it may not benefit to children's social development and parent-children relationships. Parents' responsibilities could not be excluded from their childcare services. A new form of Elite cluster - dual roles of colleagues and parents Employees who used corporate childcare services also played the roles of parents in the children's nurseries. The colleagues organized an informal parents' association who would help each others in caring children. With the relationships of informal parents' association, the employees had more opportunities to meet and communicate with colleagues in other departments. Corporate and nurseries working together; he corporate and affiliated nurseries were partners. They organize family activities suitable for their employees. The nurseries provided key issues/ topics to promote employees' parenting. An outdoor activity arranged by nurseries attracted children and their families because they considered it is a good opportunity to build up friendships and the employees believed that it also benefited to their relationships with other colleagues. The partnership of companies and nurseries created a win-win strategy.

Full paper download: Yeh Y_parental imvolvement and responsibility.pdf

Caring, employment and QOL: A comparison of employed and non-employed mothers of adults with ID

2008-10-28T18:39:56Z

Background Informal unpaid carers for people with ID are usually female and mothers. Recent Western literature has focused attention on the concept of work-family reconciliation including the gender issue. Without doubt, there are mothers of people with ID who leave their paid work due to the conflict between work and family care-giving. We examine the effects of care work on full-time employed, part-time employed and non-employed mothers by studying whether there are differences between these three groups in terms of social demographic context, quality of life, various factors related to their involvement in labor force and their QOL.

Materials and Methods We use data from the 2008 census survey on ID in Hsin-Chu City, Taiwan that included the primary family carers of 796 adults (aged 18 or older) with ID who were living with their families. In total, 302 of them were the adults' mothers and were of working age (younger than 65). These 302 mother carers became our study population. The survey package contained standardized scales and collected carer health, social support level, QOL, use of family support services and the characteristic data.

Results It was found that 37.4% of the mothers of working age were involved in full-time employment, 16.2% of them were involved in part-time employment and 46.4% were non-employed. The statistics revealed that, compared to their employed counterparts, the non-employed mothers were older, had older adult children, had children with a lower level of ADL, had received less years of education, had a lower level of health status, had a lower level of social support, and were more likely to be from a low income family. Logistic regression analysis showed that the factors that are significantly related to the mothers' employment status were the adult child's functioning in terms of ADL, the mother s' age, and the family income. Compared with the Taiwanese population in general, the mean QOL score for the mothers in all three of these three groups were lower for all the four domains assessed (physical, psychological, social relations and environment). When comparing between these three groups, the mean score for the overall QOL and for each domain (with the exception of the domain of social relationships) were all significantly lower among the non-employed mothers than among the full-timely employed mothers. Surprisingly, after acknowledging the effect of health status, family income and social support of the participants, logistic regression analysis did not reveal that the mothers' employment status was a significant predictor of the working age mothers' quality of life. We also found that the mothers' involvement in employment was determined by their age, adult child's ADL and family income.

Conclusions The present study is a start in addressing the issue of paid work and unpaid work among mothers of people with ID in Taiwanese society. Perhaps these results can become a benchmark for similar measurements carried out by women's movement. These results may then help to frame policy efforts related to the current advocacy for the creation of a supportive environment for lifelong woman carers.

Full paper download: Chou Y_employed and non-employed mothers.pdf

Engaging parents in anti-drug work: Policy implications of evidence-based parent education programs

2008-10-28T19:05:54Z

Recent approaches in drug prevention have increasingly recognized the vital role of parents as risk or protective agents in youth development. However, programs that focus on Chinese families are still limited, and few have adopted robust research methodologies to demonstrate its efficacy. This paper will present the results of a two- phase project on Hong Kong parents with reference to anti-drug work and discuss the impact of the findings on drug prevention policies and strategies. Phase I of the project was a large-scale survey on 5,612 parents and explored the motivational factors and barriers to their participation in drug-prevention programs in Hong Kong. The findings facilitated the development of a drug-prevention program that was theory-driven and tailored for Hong Kong parents who claimed their adolescent children manifested at risk behavior. Phase II of the project was a randomized-control-trial study which involved over 200 parents of at risk youths to finish a multi-session education program. The evaluation study collected convincing evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of the program because after training, the parents in the experimental groups generally performed better than the control group parents in terms of knowledge of drugs, attitude towards drugs, sense of self-efficacy, perceived family cohesion and management of parenting stress. While the findings confirmed the usefulness of this program and attracted additional funds for public dissemination, much more needs to be done to effectively mobilize parents as partners in preventing and fighting youth drug abuse. The paper will also discuss the implications of the project in theory, research as well as anti-drug policies and services.

Beyond the typology: A Reinterpretation of the East Asian Welfare Regime

2008-10-28T19:08:51Z

Some researchers have been convinced that welfare developments in East Asia, especially Japan and Korea, can be fitted into the existing three worlds of welfare model, while others have insisted that existing welfare regime theories are not able to explain East Asian welfare regimes. This article assumes that we need to go beyond both of these traditional explanations. In the welfare state research fields, welfare regime approaches tend to focus on specific contextual conditions and cross-national differences. As a result, they tend to overemphasize history at the expense of theory. This article tries to combine deductive causal modeling with an institutional-historical context by identifying the contingent rent political game model and deducing important characteristics of East Asian welfare regime from this model. This model opens out the possibility of change in East Asian welfare regimes following the processes of democratization and globalization. Details of this are given in the conclusion.

Full paper download: Hong K_beyond typology.pdf

Making Sense of the Asian Welfare Regimes With the Western Typology

2008-10-28T19:16:26Z

Increasing number of studies has focused on categorizing Asian countries based on welfare programs. However, they relied on typologies based on Western countries or covered only a small number of Asian countries. A few studies examined Asian countries without the Western counterparts. As an alternative, we examined the overall development of the welfare programs of the nine Asian countries and 17 Western countries together. Previous studies have examined stratification effects, governmental roles, and financing methods of welfare programs. We developed a weflare state typoloy with the contents of welfare programs (program types, coverage, contributor, contribution type, benefit, and education). First, among both Asian and Western countries together, we found the three groups based on welfare program contents: (1) Hong Kong and Australia, (2) Provident fund system countries, (3) social insurance system countries relatively concerning health, (4) social insurance system countries with diverse old age pension programs. Second, among the Asian countries, in terms of the welfare program contents, we found three groups: (1) provident fund type countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore), (2) social insurance type countries (Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand), and (3) Hong Kong as an outlier. In terms of the welfare expenditure composition, we found a strong contrast between Asian and Western countries: the Western countries' focus on social security and the Asian countries on education. The present study suggests that we should examine both program contents and welfare efforts and cover Asian and Western experiences to understand peculiarities and similarities of each country's historical experiences in welfare institutions better.

Full paper download: Park C_asian welfare regimes.pdf

Korean and Mexican welfare regimes: a historical comparison

2008-10-28T19:27:43Z

We undertake a comparative work to incorporate some heuristic instruments (in particular, from Esping-Andersen and other scholars) into the debate on societies that have belatedly or slowly begun the task of constructing welfare institutions. We introduce the comparison of Korean and Mexican welfare regimes. Mexico has paradoxically secured the dualized character of its system, with the construction of new institutions that serve to further embed the stratification of the social security and protection system: A stratified social security system, and also a stratified protection system for the poor. A good part of the previous Mexican dualism was due to omission (exclusion of rural workers and informal urban workers); now the dualism is institutionalized in a notably stratified social system. In Mexico there is not a strong political coalition in support of the social citizenship, but rather a conservative coalition has been created that seeks to carefully administer the limited benefits that are offered to the population in conditions of poverty, and the weakened de-comodification of the social institutions. Korea has been abandoning a residual system and can be placed in various characteristics of the conservative system (familialization) with some tendencies that would foster a social democratic pattern; but it is strongly limited by the private presence (comodifying) in health care. However, this limit will be fought by the gradual creation of groups (coalition) that promote the integral citizenship and promote an increase in rights. We can also mention the institutionalization of universalism, linked to limited markets and governed by public action (health), with declining familialization (but still socially strong). Korea is clearly a hybrid case.

Full paper download: Lomeli E_Korean and Mexican welfare regimes.pdf

Social Assistance Policy and Its Impact on Social Development in China: The Case of the Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS)

2008-10-28T19:29:19Z

China has been undergoing large-scale socio-economic transformation in the past three decades. With the shift from a planned economy to a market one, China's social security system has been transformed fundamentally. In order to make the inefficient state-owned enterprises to survive in the competitive market economy, the Chinese government has made great efforts to transform the traditional danwei (work unit)-based social security system into a multiple-tier social security system based on social insurance programs since the mid-1980s. However, the embryonic social insurance system has proven inadequate and inefficient to cope with the mounting unemployment and urban poverty caused by the reform of SOEs, and left more urban people outside the social protection system, which imposed a negative impact on social stability. In the late 1990s, to pacify the vulnerable social groups consisting of laid-off workers, unemployed, retirees, and poor farmers, the Chinese government started to reform its public assistance policy, and establish a social assistance system with the minimum living standard scheme (MLSS) its core. Focusing on the policy pertinent to the MLSS in China in general and in Guangdong in particular, this article aims to examine the social assistance policy in China and its impact on social development. It argues that though the MLSS indicates a statist approach to social development, the residual nature of the MLSS and the localization of the financial responsibility have hampered the role of social assistance policy in promoting people's wellbeing and social development in China.

Full paper download: Ngok K_social assistance policy.pdf

Welfare Regimes in the Wake of State Socialism: Viet Nam & China Compared

2008-10-28T19:31:11Z

Welfare regimes are distinctive sets of institutional arrangements that govern the creation and allocation of welfare and its stratification effects. Welfare regimes analysis seeks to explain the historical determinants and stratification effects of welfare regimes in different geographical and historical settings. 'First generation' welfare regimes studies sought to explain variation in the welfare states of advanced capitalist countries in Western Europe and North America (Esping-Andersen 1987, 1990). More recent scholarship has sought to extend welfare regimes analysis to other economic and regional settings (see, for example, Gough and Wood 2006). It is suggestive that within the growing literature on welfare regimes, there have been few if any attempts to theorize welfare regimes in formerly state-socialist settings (for an exception, see Deacon 2000). But a standard assumption of welfare regimes analysis is that a country's welfare institutions exist and develop in interdependent relation with other social, political, economic, and cultural institutions. It is, by extension, reasonable to expect that the evolution and involution of state-socialism significantly affects the development of welfare regimes in the wake of state socialism. In this paper I extend the conceptual and theoretical foundations of welfare regimes analysis to explain divergence and convergence in the development of welfare regimes in Viet Nam and China.

Full paper download: London J_welfare regimes in state socialism.pdf

Analyzing Female employment and gender occupational segregation in Taiwan: The Perspective of VoC Approach

2008-10-29T14:52:05Z

Compared to the advanced countries, the employment rate of married women in Taiwan (41.2%) equals that of Italy (42.4%) and U.K. (47.3%), and surpassed that of Germany (38.4%) and Japan (17.6%). However, Taiwan's female employment rate decreases enormously while their children are aged above 3 years old. Another interesting finding of Sawako (2007) shows married women's income contribute much to Taiwan's household income about 20-45%. The female employment contributes therefore much for the family's income maintenance.

The other important pattern of female employment to be observed is the gender segregation of occupations. The service sector and the clerk position is mainly female-dominated work. The previous researches on gender segregation in labor market focus mainly on the following factors: human capital, gender bias from cultural perspective and rational choice approach. These approaches have the shortcomings of micro-analysis. This article aims to approach the problematic of occupational segregation and low female employment rate in Taiwan from the angle of Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach.

Based on the theoretical consideration of VoC, it is expected that firms needing highly labor skills and large size would prefer occupational or contributory insurance, whereas the employers with low labor skills small firm size would favor universal scheme. It is argued that the organizational capacities of the organizational actor (employer organization) would change this preference ordering. Contrary to Gary Beck's economic model, which assumes a single family utility function, this analysis suggests the investigation how labor markets and public policies shape gender stereotypes and for how child support rules may affect women's decisions about labor market participation.

Classifying Welfare States based on the Social Investment Strategies

2008-10-30T15:21:02Z

This presentation aims to classify 20 welfare states during the periods from 1995 to 2003, based on the social investment strategies, and examines the effects of social investment strategies on the various employment and income distribution related indicators. Social investment strategies are operationalized by the public expenditures of each active labor market policy and family welfare services, and dependent variables are measured by employment rate, women's employment rate, unemployment rate, and gini coefficient. The Fuller-Battese model, an analysis method for the pooled cross-sectional time-series data, is adopted to identify variables predicting changes in dependent variables. As a result of the cluster analysis, welfare states are classified by 4 groups such as the Social Investment States (Sweden, Denmark), the ALMP centered States (Germany, Netherlands), the Family Service centered States (UK, Luxembourg, Australia), and the Liberal Welfare States (US, Japan, Korea). An interaction effect between social investment strategies and income support programs is also founded in expanding employment rate and in reducing unemployment rate. Therefore, the Korean government should maximize its public spending on social investment strategies, such as ALMP and children & women-friendly social policies to improve each citizen's human capital and employability. At the same time, public spending on income support programs should be expanded as well.

Institutional Complementarities and Change: the Relationship between Production and Welfare Regimes in Korea

2008-10-30T15:53:02Z

The NIEs in East Asia are today undergoing institutional instabilities and changes under the pressure of democratization and globalization. They have faced different environment both domestically and internationally in comparison with the past high-growth period in which the strong developmental state played a dominant role in coordinating various institutions of production and welfare regimes.
Korea is no except to these changes. Perhaps the Korean political economy is today significantly changing more than any other neighbor East Asian countries. Since the post-financial crisis in Korea, globalization pressures and the power shift to the popular sector by the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo-hyun governments in the democratization process, interacting with each other, are now critically affecting the power relations among various social groups and classes and reshaping the economy and social welfare now and into the future.
Although the previous two relatively progressive governments had attempted to search for new equilibriums for solving the current problems, the recent changes especially since the financial crisis in 1999 are apparently changing toward a liberal type of welfare capitalism as a result of the comprehensive neo-liberal reforms. Is that so? It seems that the Korean political economy is now very unstable by revealing some critical tensions among the institutions in the production and welfare regimes as well as the relevant politics, and thus falling in the process of a critical historical conjuncture in searching for a new paradigm of the welfare capitalism adapting to these changes.
How can we interpret Korea's current changes and responding strategies? How much have the past institutional legacies of the developmental state changed and created new paths for institutional change to the future? In other words, to what extent have the current changes revealed the path-dependent nature from the past institutional legacies and to what direction is the Korean welfare capitalism really moving?
The varieties of capitalism(VOC) approach has been getting attention as a useful analytical tool for explaining the existence of the different types of the political economies and their continuities and changes through time. Institutional complementarities and modes of coordination (or coordination mechanism) seem to be key concepts in the VOC perspective for explaining institutional continuities and changes in response to the endogenous as well as exogenous challenges.
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Based on these analytical tools, this paper tentatively attempts to identify what kind of institutional complementarities and modes of coordination have been formed between the core institutional domains in the production and welfare regimes in Korea and explaining why and how they are changing. By doing so, this paper aims at evaluating the usefulness as an analytical framework based on the VOC perspective and obtaining some theoretical and empirical implications in explaining the recent changes in the political economies in the East Asian context.

Full paper download: Chung M_production and welfare regimes in Korea.pdf