Trends and Determinants of Social Expenditure in Korea, Japan and Taiwan

Social 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.