Institutional Analysis Of East Asian Social Security System

The social security institution in developed countries faced confidence crisis, and must be reformed, after the breakout of "petroleum crisis" in 1970s. In such context, the East Asian social security model has aroused worldwide burgeoning interest.The East Asian welfare model is currently set as a mirror for western social security reform and is used by western scholars to consider the institution context and institutional roots of their welfare model. At the same time, the research on East Asian welfare model has an important meaning for China. The paper uses the institutional method to analyze the differences between the East Asian welfare model and Western model, especially, the factors of historical tradition and culture lied deeply in the two models. Such institutional and comparative analysis is helpful in the process of designing Chinese characteristic social security institution.Generally speaking, researchers usually attach importance to the analysis of technical issues and ignore institutional arrangement in current social security papers, and set Western welfare model as the benchmark for developing countries to build their own social security system. The study in this paper makes great efforts to avoid the technical issues of social security institution ,and emphasize more on such factors as history,tradition and culture, which lie deeply in the institutional model. In the perspective of history,cross-subject and cross-culture, the paper analysis the origin and construction of social security institutional model, and tries to make an induction of the differences between welfare models in different culture.Compared with the Western social security institutional model, the East Asian model has its own prominent characters. Firstly, the development of its social security institutional model is far lagging behind the economic development; whereas, western social security institution synchronize with their industrialization and urbanization. Secondly, social relief plays an important role in East Asian social security institution; while, social insurance is in the center of western social security system, and social relief plays a less important role. Thirdly, family safeguard plays an important role in East Asian social security institution, and shows the prominent cultural characteristic of East Asian society. Fourthly, the pay -for-expenditure model is taken by all East Asian social insurance institution, and except for Japan and South Korea, the partakers of other East Asian social insurance institution all have their own individual accounts; In contrast, the western countries take mutually beneficial pay-as-you-go social insurance model under which people currently working pay for the pension of those entitled to them at present. Fifthly, building social security for special hierarchy, such as government officials and teachers, is emphasized. Sixthly, diversification. Despite the above common elements, the social security system in each East Asian country has its own characteristic.The East Asian social security institution has its own historical origin and heritage. Confucianism is held to be a key part of the shared heritage of East Asian as a whole. Both family and state play an important role in traditional East Asian society. Family is in the center of East Asian traditional social life, and consequently, thewelfare value in East Asian is family-centered. At the same time, state plays an important role in the early social security system of East Asian. Its function lies in improving social anti-disaster system, making compensation for the imperfection of family protection. The unified function of family and state helps to build an efficient social security nets, and the effective running of this security nets preserves the stability of East Asian society.The transition of social security institution in East Asia is also different from that in western countries. In China, the social security transition shows the pinion of traditional culture. Family safeguard and socia...