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Contrasting approaches to old-age income protection in Korea and Taiwan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

YOUNG JUN CHOI*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Administration, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
JIN WOOK KIM
Affiliation:
Department of Social Welfare, Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
*
Address for correspondence: Young Jun Choi, Department of Public Administration, Korea University, Anam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Seoul 136-701, Republic of Korea. E-mail: sspyjc@korea.ac.kr

Abstract

Old-age income security has become one of the most important social policy issues in two East Asian emerging welfare states, South Korea and Taiwan, as they transform at a remarkable pace into societies with a representation of older people approaching that of western countries. During the last two decades, the two countries have developed different forms of social protection for older people. South Korea has expanded social insurance pensions with means-tested benefits, whereas Taiwan has introduced flat-rate old-age allowance programmes that exclude the rich rather than target the poor. much has been written about these programmes, but their actual performance in reducing old-age poverty has not been thoroughly examined. This paper analyses the anti-poverty effect of these programmes, firstly by describing recent developments in the two countries, and secondly by examining headcount poverty rates and the size and incidence of the ‘poverty gap’ using nationally-representative micro-household datasets. We argue that while the programmes have increasingly reduced old-age income security, the different policy choices have resulted in distinctive welfare outcomes in the two countries. In the final section of the article, we discuss the long-term implications of the recent policy reforms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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