Governing the Care Provision: A Comparative Perspective On Japan and Korea

This paper examines the relationship between the state and the community in regards to the care provision. While both countries are regarded as familialistic welfare regime that emphasizes the role the families, the role of... [ view full abstract ]

This paper examines the relationship between the state and the community in regards to the care provision. While both countries are regarded as familialistic welfare regime that emphasizes the role the families, the role of the state, market and the community has grown last decades as the population has been aging rapidly. While Japan and Korea took similar institutional trajectory in different point of time, the way in which the care provision was organized was varied depending on the context of the development of care labor market and the community organizations. This paper compares the care provision for the elderly in Japan and Korea with the focus on the community-based cooperatives. First, this paper compares the demographic changes and the public responses on the care provision for the elderly in respective governments. Second, we analyze the important juncture of policy changes on care provision in relation to the civil society and the market. Finally, we examine the experience of community based organizations in the changing care, based on the interviews of the managers in the cooperatives and discuss the tensions between the state and the community in regards to the care provision.