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Child‐related family policies in East and Southeast Asia: An intra‐regional comparison
Author(s) -
Tonelli Simone,
Drobnič Sonja,
Huinink Johannes
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 1369-6866
DOI - 10.1111/ijsw.12485
Subject(s) - east asia , poverty , psychological intervention , development economics , social policy , fertility , economic growth , cluster (spacecraft) , geography , political science , economic geography , economics , sociology , china , psychology , population , demography , archaeology , psychiatry , law , computer science , programming language
Over the past five decades, dramatic demographic and socio‐economic changes have taken place in East and Southeast Asian countries, with important implications for the family and its future. Still, little is known about the typical configurations of state support for families in these countries. We examine governments’ strategies for supporting families and reducing the cost of children. Employing hierarchical cluster analysis, we uncover four distinctive family policy profiles—maternity support, poverty‐relief support, employment‐oriented support and encompassing support—and discuss their implication for defamilialisation. What appears less clear are the drivers behind such configurations, but there are indications that fertility concerns, the cultural fabric of a country and the productivist profile of the social policy regime seem to influence the orientation of family policy models. Overall, the development of family policy in East and Southeast Asia seems to be fragmented and characterised by parallel interventions of different types of provenance.