East Asian social policy in the wake of the financial crisis: farewell to productivism?

For some years, a productivist strand characterised debates about a possible East Asian welfare model. However, recent policy initiatives, prompted partly by the Asian financial crisis and partly by far wider economic, social and political changes, cast doubt on the continuing validity of the productivist thesis in an East Asian context. This article reviews the evidence, and argues that while social policy has some nonproductivist tendencies in South Korea and Taiwan in particular, they are not as substantial and significant as is sometimes held. It concludes that it is not yet time to discard productivism, which remains plausible and useful in analysing social policy systems in the region.