The Social Risk of Low Fertility in Taiwan

This chapter examines the low fertility phenomenon in Taiwan and argues that the low fertility problem can be identified as a type of new social risk. Existing studies on new social risks tend to focus on the social risks that have negative influences on individuals but ignore those that have more negative influences on the whole society, such as the low fertility problem. This chapter illustrates how the Taiwanese government recognizes low fertility as a social risk and how such recognition facilitated the recent development of policies that support families and children.

Teenage Pregnancy and its Support System in Korea

While family structure continues to diversify in Korean society, society’s rejection of unmarried mothers continues to be a strong obstacle. However, Korean teenage mothers increasingly are deciding to raise their own children and live their daily lives in communities that hold biases and express rejection towards them. At present, the Single-Parent Family Support Act is central to the development of support policies for unmarried mothers, but as pointed out in this study, it is important to implement detailed, individualized, comprehensive, and continual assistance, not limited to those who opt for childrearing but also towards all unmarried mothers who opt for adoption. While raising one’s own child, it is important to provide long-term and continual support and support that helps the recipient foresee how she can step her way up to independence, rather than short-term and sporadic handouts.

An Analysis of Contemporary Japanese Rural Families

Many Japanese researchers have suggested that both Japanese and Western societies are experiencing individualization of the family; whether or not this is the case in Japanese rural farming villages remains unclear. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate this question using a case study. The research involves interviews of families living in rural areas within the Shimane Prefecture, each engaged in agriculture, forestry, and/or fishery. The emerging picture is that it is increasingly difficult to find traditional Ie in rural farming villages today. For the rural farming family, individual freedom is important. However, respecting individuals seems to occur for the purposes of maintaining unity of the family as a group rather than for the purpose of individual self-realization. Therefore, emphasizing individual freedom does not mean conflict among family members (i.e., enforcement of competition with other family members or compromises by them).

Globalization and Transformation of Care in Japan

This chapter deals with the situation of family and care work in Japan, and, in particular, the Conjunction between Family, Care Work, and Immigration in Japan. The chapter is aimed to elucidate the complex interplay between family and care work from both paid and unpaid work. Furthermore, Japan currently does not have an immigration policy that would include social integration policies. Since the care needs cannot be met solely by the families or the domestic labor market, globalization of care will become a salient trend for a foreseeable future. Moreover, the chapter proceeds to analyze the globalization thesis within the Japanese context. According to the author, one should be able to see the convergence of welfare states in many countries, but as in the case of Japan, the process of globalization is not linear but contingent. Instead, what one has seen is a dialectical process of how the domestic factors are differently shaping the well-being of the people within their own institutional histories and strategies.

Protective Factors in Family Relationships

This chapter analyzes the importance of protective factors in family relationships. In Confucian societies, where services for older people may be limited, intergenerational family relationships are crucial in providing care for the elderly. Confucian societies are better at recognizing the protective influence of the family, but scholars from these areas suggest that the culture may be changing. As the “One child” norm extends (not only in China) across many Asian societies, the challenges for young people in supporting their parents and grandparents may become overwhelming. This chapter suggests that at every stage of the life cycle, some families will need state support in order to carry out their protective role in mitigating the risks experienced by both the young and the old. A state/family partnership approach is likely to be more acceptable, more effective, and more economic than state care alone.

On the Genealogy of Public and Private

Since the late 1990s, the literature of public-private management and publicness have increased, but the genealogy of public-private in a frame of pluralistic definitions has not been studied. This study focuses on ascertaining how the nature and operations of public-private relations influence discursive practices in public-private management, organization, and policy studies. The literature review produced thousands of abstracts (N=2242), but only few articles (N=39) from 22 highly ranked journals (2000-2010). Despite the research of public-private management, it seems that a surprisingly small number of researchers have recognized that the public/private sphere provides a particularly useful approach to evolve organization, management, and policy studies. The only exceptions seem to be anchored by citizenship and especially individualism, “personalized public services.” The authors also found that researchers did not integrate disciplinary traditions in their approaches and link them to different public/private arenas: public in organizations, private in organizations, public in social life, and private in social life. They conclude that the new trends in public-private organizing and management will remain an enigma unless the following is asked: how can the arenas of public/private counteract the effects of themselves?

Spectrum of Public and Private Spheres in East Asia

This chapter discusses the significance of cultural traditions for social development in East Asian societies, in particular Japan and Korea. The chapter treats culture and society in a broad sense in order to find out what makes the East Asian case specific. Moreover, the chapter provides a reinterpretation of Japanese social realities and social models in 2013 when Japanese politics and society are going through the transformation known as Abenomics.

Using Social Quality as a Framework for Analyzing Social Development in Taiwan

This research applies social quality framework to analyze the current social development of Taiwan by utilizing the governmental database as a secondary dataset and using meta-analysis as a further check in data collection. This study found that the social development of current Taiwanese society keeps progressing along with requirements and indicators of social quality. Among them, Taiwan’s performance of social development within the dimension of social economic security attains the best results. Furthermore, in the fields of social inclusion and social empowerment dimensions, the indicators show much progress. However, the biggest room for further improvement and development clearly is in social cohesion.

The Impact of Global Financial Crises on the Family in Taiwan

Family plays an unusually important role in Taiwanese society, and this chapter analyzes the consequences of global financial crises on the family in Taiwan. With its export-oriented economy, Taiwan is vulnerable to global vacillations. In the periods from 1997 to 2004 and from 2008 to the 2009, Taiwan experienced mass unemployment and family suffering. This chapter deals with the effects of the economic recession on family finances and family attitudes involved. The study shows how the anxiety affected the willingness of people to have children and/or support their parents. Furthermore, the victims of financial crises had a greater awareness of the necessity of providing intergenerational support, but they also wanted to have fewer children. The data clearly presents that economic hardship changes the traditional generational contract as well.

Policies and Politics

Since the late 1950s, Hong Kong’s public health services have increased. They are mainly funded by taxes, supplemented by minimal user fees. In the late 1980s, the government recognized the limitations of this financing model and has subsequently proposed alternative methods of funding. Their proposals have been rejected by various stakeholders, who represent different, and even conflicting, values and interests. This chapter describes the development of health services and the debates that have surrounded health financing since the late 1980s. It shows that the health finance debate in Hong Kong is not a simple issue that can be tackled by rational planning; instead, it is a complex consequence of welfare politics in an increasingly mobilized society.