Development of Publicly-Funded Social Care in Japan and Korea: Policy Linkage between Social Care Programs and Labor Market Policies

This paper examines the development of publicly-funded social care programs in Japan and Korea, known as the “familistic” welfare state, over the past two decades. Despite the rapid expansion of social care programs funded by taxes and social insurance premiums, the delivery of social care services in the two countries has been mostly delegated to the private sector (including both non-profit and forprofit organizations), as opposed to the public sector. This paper argues that Japan and Korea have utilized the mixture of publiclyfunded social care and privately-dominated care service delivery as a social investment strategy in order to alleviate the burden of care responsibilities on female family members and create more employment opportunities in the care service sector. By making the policy linkage between social care programs and labor market policies, the two countries have attempted to solve multiple policy problems, while facing the pressure of socio-demographic challenges.