From Productivism to Post-Productivism: Unpacking the Socio-Economic Conditions for Welfare Development in Six East Asian Economies

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, Ian Holliday introduced the ‘Productivist Welfare Capitalism’ (PWC) thesis in Political Studies, challenging the classification of the East Asian welfare regime alongside Western models. Debate persists over whether East Asian societies still fit the ‘productivist’ label or how to define a potential ‘post-productivist’ era. This article examines five causal conditions – economic growth, population ageing, economic globalisation, unemployment and deindustrialisation – to analyse the factors driving welfare development in mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), it finds that since the turn of the century (2000–2021), economic growth is no longer a prerequisite for welfare expansion in these economies, challenging the basic tenet of the PWC thesis. Instead, population ageing and integration into the global economy have driven welfare expansion across East Asia, reflecting a general transformation towards addressing emergent welfare needs in the region.

Keywords

productivist welfare capitalism post-productivism East Asia welfare regimes population ageing globalisation fuzzy-set analysis

Introduction

Early research on East Asian welfare development has been influenced by the ‘developmental state’ thesis, which stressed the influence of economic success in the region (Johnson, 1982). Johnson’s notion of the East Asian ‘developmental state’, in turn, had a significant influence on Midgley (1986), who was among the first authors to identify ‘reluctant welfarism’ as a critical component of East Asian political economy. With a little distance, Tang (2000; see also Midgley and Tang, 2001) continued this line of argument by characterising East Asian social policy development as adhering to a ‘production-first’ approach, which relied on social policies mainly to uphold state legitimacy and appease strategically important segments of the labour force. Based on these various debates, Holliday (2000) systematically expanded Esping-Andersen’s (1990) welfare regime typology by adding a fourth ideal type, namely ‘Productivist Welfare Capitalism’ (PWC), in his path-breaking article in Political Studies.

The PWC thesis not only made an essential contribution to the understanding of East Asian welfare models but also significantly contributed to consolidating the scholarship on East Asian social policy analysis into specialised journals, conferences and international research networks. Thereby, the PWC thesis was based on two central arguments: first, that East Asian economies are growth-oriented developmental states, and second, that welfare policy in East Asia is strictly subordinate to the overriding policy objective of economic development (see also: Holliday, 2005; Holliday and Wilding, 2003; Kwon, 2005; Kwon and Holliday, 2006). Holliday posited, therefore, that the East Asian welfare regime cannot easily be categorised alongside Western ideal types of welfare state capitalism. The PWC thesis in East Asia was later extended by Gough (2004; Gough and McGregor, 2007), who clustered East Asian cases within an ‘informal security regime’ in which minimal social rights were combined with strong social investment, particularly in primary healthcare and education.

Yet, the aftermath of the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis created several profound challenges for East Asian welfare development. Whereas recoveries from the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis were generally substantial, economic growth in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2021) were more sluggish across the region (Kühner and Shi, 2023). Moreover, the sharp decline in fertility rates and the associated population ageing arguably erode the institutional sustainability of East Asian welfare regimes. Furthermore, economic globalisation has led to a structural transformation of East Asian labour markets. The rise of the knowledge economy has widened the gap between low-skilled workers in the traditional manufacturing and low-value-added service sectors and their high-skilled colleagues in the new industries (Choi et al., 2020). New social risks have imperilled the livelihoods of an increasing number of households forced to participate in non-standard and precarious work arrangements, further diminishing the opportunities for social mobility (Lee, 2023). Holliday (2005: 145) wrote that ‘it [was] not yet time to discard productivism’, whereas Gough (2004) speculated that future welfare development in East Asia might diverge broadly into more market- and public-investment-centred trajectories, respectively. Many scholars have since described the momentum of welfare development unleashed in East Asia in response to these challenges – implicitly or explicitly – as heralding the beginning of a break of East Asian governments’ commitment to their productivist roots and towards a newly emerging ‘post-productivist’ welfare settlement (Choi, 2013; Yang and Kühner, 2020).

To date, there is still little agreement within East Asian social policy analysis as to the depth of welfare reforms since the turn of the 21st century and whether they can be conceptualised as radical or path-breaking. What is more, the debate on East Asian ‘post-productivism’ has produced little consensus regarding the socio-economic drivers of those welfare reforms, including the emergence of more diversified East Asian service economies, increased integration into global trade and participation in global value chains and changing demographic structures influencing East Asian labour markets, consumption patterns and the demand for welfare services. As a result, welfare systems in East Asia have moved away from being primarily production-focused, responding instead to social needs and protection. This shift reflects the broader post-productivist trend of prioritising social welfare over economic growth, with distinct sectoral implications. However, these changes are not monolithic and vary according to national and regional contexts, reflecting the specific economic, political and demographic contexts of each. Several studies argued that welfare reforms were implemented in response to socio-economic changes, including declining economic growth and rising unemployment (Aspalter, 2006; Croissant, 2004; Kwon, 2005; Wilding, 2008; and more recently: Fu and Hwang, 2018; Lee and Kim, 2019). Hong and Ngok (2022) revisited the industrialisation thesis to account for welfare development in mainland China and stressed that industrial development and economic growth have profoundly influenced the extension of public healthcare and old-age pension system to include rural and migrant workers. Finally, numerous studies saw resource reallocation from conventional income maintenance to new social policy domains such as family and active labour market policy as part of a ‘social investment turn’ in the context of East Asian governments’ attempts to respond to their societies’ inclusion in the global knowledge economy (Choi et al., 2020).

However, the predominantly isolated case studies that produced these findings are limited in uncovering the causality between the broader socio-economic shifts and processes of welfare development from a historical and comparative perspective. Neither have they been able to show systematically which socio-economic conditions have been critical for East Asian welfare development. In short, while much of the East Asian ‘productivism’ versus ‘post-productivism’ debate has been preoccupied with attempts to sharpen the conceptual and methodological tools to measure the depth and trajectories of East Asian welfare development, several vital theoretical questions have been left unresolved: under which specific socio-economic conditions have East Asian governments pursued major welfare reforms to break away from their productivist roots; what specific characteristics distinguish the post-productivist from the productivist era in East Asia from a comparative perspective?

In this article, we contribute to closing this evidence gap by introducing a new measure of East Asian welfare development based on our previous work (Yang, 2018; Yang and Kühner, 2020) and identifying five internal and external socio-economic pressures, including economic growth, population ageing, economic globalisation, unemployment and deindustrialisation, as ancillary conditions in a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). This approach allows us to test the veracity of the PWC thesis for six East Asian economies, including mainland China (hereafter: China), Hong Kong SAR (hereafter: Hong Kong), Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan since the turn of the century (2000–2021). Based on these findings, we are able to draw out several critical differences between the PWC thesis as originally spelt out by Holliday (2000). First, our operationalisation of East Asian ‘welfare development’ indicates an expansion of social policy across the region that transcends the institutional logics embedded in the original sub-classifications of facilitative, developmental-universalist and developmental-particularist PWC ideal types. Second, based on this outcome, we argue that the ‘productivist era’ in East Asia has indeed ended, since economic growth no longer fundamentally predetermines welfare development. Third, by contrast, we posit that ‘post-productivism’ is best characterised by the shifting focus of the East Asian welfare regime to balance the goals of newly emerging economic structures with ensuing welfare needs, particularly resulting from population ageing and economic globalisation.

In what follows, we outline the significant socio-economic changes in the six East Asian economies and discuss how they are hypothesised to impact welfare development according to classic theories in comparative social policy analysis. Since conceptualising and measuring welfare development has been mired in difficulty, we subsequently outline our previous approach to distinguish different levels and trajectories of welfare development in the East Asian welfare geography (Yang, 2018; Yang and Kühner, 2020). Although readers unfamiliar with fsQCA might perceive this as overly technical, we are then required to briefly discuss our calibration decisions for the five conditions. This is followed by a more detailed deliberation of the findings of our fsQCA and inconsistent cases in our conjunctural solution paths. Finally, we situate our findings within the East Asian social policy literature, using them to challenge Holliday’s (2000) assertion that East Asian welfare systems resist classification under Western welfare state ideal types. We then conclude by drawing out the article’s major contributions, its far-reaching implications for East Asian welfare policy scholarship and limitations to be addressed in future studies. With this structure in mind, we begin by examining the socio-economic transformations that have shaped welfare development across East Asia.

Changing Socio-Economic Conditions for East Asian Welfare Development

The East Asian ‘miracle’ stands out concerning successful economic development and has been subject to countless studies addressing whether the East Asian success story can be emulated in other parts of the world (e.g. see Stiglitz, 1993). Singapore and Hong Kong today are among the wealthiest economies globally, while Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are at a level of economic development that is considerably above the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. Since 2010, China has been the largest economy among the six economies and was over twice the size of Japan in absolute terms. China’s transition from low- to upper-middle-income status was particularly accelerated, given that China’s GDP increased fourfold between 2000 and 2021 (Hong Kong and Singapore have doubled their GDP per capita during the same period). East Asian growth dynamics have been primarily led by manufacturing and export-oriented industrialisation and have been assisted by market-friendly trade and competition policies. While initially relying on import substitution policies, East Asian economies have built competitive capacity in labour-intensive, low-skill industries, which vastly increased the demand for imports of capital goods. From this perspective, export growth was critical in early economic development because it eased balance-of-payment problems that would have otherwise aggravated further industrialisation processes (Storm and Naastepad, 2005). The role of human capital formation and increasing emphasis on innovation, research and development (R&D) in addressing increased global competition has also been essential for East Asian economic strategies in this context (Kwon and Kang, 2011).

Although governments across East Asia have responded to rising welfare expectations by increasing social protection efforts that go beyond market-centred, human capital-focused and family-oriented approaches that have historically dominated the regional welfare paradigm (Hudson and Kühner, 2012), discussions about the sustainability of such measures are continuing, particularly where substantial adjustments of the tax and regulation regime are not regarded as viable options by critical stakeholders. These debates are salient in the discussions about the reform of retirement systems (Kühner and Chou, 2019). The East Asian average proportion of people aged 65 years and older has increased from 5.57% in 1990 to 12.55% in 2021 (The World Bank, 2023). According to more recent demographic projections by the United Nations (UNESCAP, 2023), the number of older adults in East Asia is expected to more than double from 764 million in 2021 to 1.6 billion in 2050; more than 35% of the total population will be 60 years of age or older by the year 2050; 10% of the total population will be 80 years of age or older. Ageing societies have long been argued to threaten the longevity of social protection systems, and rather than population growth perse, a concern among East Asian policymakers has been that the demographic dividend for economic development that comprises a young, educated population might slowly turn into a demographic burden as advancements in human capital formation struggle to keep up with the rapid changes in the demand of global and local labour markets (Bloom et al., 2003). It is widely accepted that ageing societies have contributed to the slowdown in economic performance and a decline in productivity levels, which underscores it; macro-comparative studies have commonly drawn direct linkages between reduced economic growth and ensuing tax revenues and surging public sector debts accelerated by growing welfare constituencies (Kühner, 2010).

The East Asian economies have become more industrially advanced and integrated into the global knowledge economy since the early 1970s. The average KOF Index of Economic Globalisation (Savina et al., 2019) for the region, which includes measurements of actual flows of trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), portfolio investment, income payments to foreign nationals, restrictions imposed by import barriers, mean tariff rates and taxes on international trade and capital accounts, has increased from 33.74 in the 1970s to 59.06 in 2020. Scholars have argued that the globalised market economy presents a barrier for governments to establish or maintain comprehensive welfare systems (Ha, 2008). The common argument is that globalisation has created better opportunities for processes of competitive deregulation understood as scenarios in which internationally mobile firms, which operate in political systems characterised by only limited levels of regulation, can undercut prices for goods and services and thus create substantial pressures for higher-cost businesses in more regulated systems (see e.g. Allan and Scruggs, 2004; Kühner, 2018). The mere threat of relocation of considerable parts of the production process – and all the macro-economic consequences attached – can serve as a strong incentive for local policymakers to introduce legislative changes favouring the interests of businesses and large-scale corporations. As the same assumptions apply to the regulatory burdens associated with the expansion of welfare systems, Pierson (1995) argued that competitive deregulation can, under extreme circumstances, commence a ‘downward spiral in social provision’ which may eventually lead to rudimentary ‘lowest common denominator’ social policies designed to be minimally acceptable to a broad coalition of interests, often resulting in limited or diluted social protections and other tax expenditures and subsidies.

Yet, others questioned the veracity of this efficiency thesis, instead arguing that market openness is related to higher, rather than lower, welfare development due to increased exposure to global welfare norms, perceived pressures of economic competitiveness and ensuing welfare attitudes conducive to welfare expansion (Kühner et al., 2024). The so-called ‘compensation thesis’ sees accelerated welfare development as a collective response to shared economic risks in countries highly dependent on the global market and sustained export surpluses. In this perspective, comparatively generous welfare programmes are interpreted as institutions that compensate and insure against the risks posed by increased integration into the global economy, not just through trade but also through participation in global value chains. As such, research has previously found that exposure to globalisation in high-income East Asian economies is associated with socio-economic vulnerabilities and with support for welfare spending among the general public (Lim and Burgoon, 2020). At the same time, globalisation exposure was found to be particularly strongly associated with subjective feelings of financial insecurity and support for welfare spending among the so-called ‘globalisation losers’, who face increasing competition from the similarly-skilled, cheaper workforce in lower-income trading partners.

On the domestic level, the majority of East Asian economies have experienced not only continuously increasing unemployment but also – and maybe more significantly – a higher labour market precarity since the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis. While the average unemployment rate across East Asia was 2.5% in the 1980s and early 1990s, it increased to nearly 5% after the 2018 Global Financial Crisis and to about 4% after the COVID-19 pandemic (ADB, 2022). More importantly, the empirical evidence confirms that East Asian economies, not unlike their Western counterparts, have increasingly witnessed a disintegration of economic and labour market dynamics due to deindustrialisation and the consequential rise in precarity and structural and long-term unemployment (Lee, 2023). Policies promoting economic progress in East Asia have emphasised growth in the service sector, including finance, technology and creative industries, alongside regulatory reforms to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and initiatives to foster innovation and entrepreneurship. At the same time, the move away from heavy reliance on manufacturing induced a state of precarious living through unstable employment contracts, workfare, rising housing costs and the gig economy’s lack of job security. This is seen in the paradox of East Asian economic development, where greater precarity is set against the backdrop of deeper integration in the global knowledge economy.

These changes in economic performance across East Asian countries were accompanied by a historically unprecedented shift in employment from agriculture/manufacturing activities to service sector employment. Until the early 1970s, the East Asian economy’s average showed an even 50/50 split in peoples’ employment in the agriculture/manufacturing versus service industries. Since then, the gap has widened continuously: By 2020, merely 30% of the labour force was employed in agriculture or manufacturing in the six East Asian economies (ADB, 2022). Pointing back to the work by Baumol (1967), Pierson (2001: 84) stressed the link between ‘declining productivity growth’ and ‘the massive shift in employment from relatively dynamic manufacturing activities to generally less dynamic service provision’. The difficulty of achieving productivity improvements in the service sector, as compared to manufacturing, is commonly acknowledged. This has led to the belief that the relative rise of the service industry is responsible for the economic slowdown in highly affluent, information-based societies worldwide. Iversen and Cusack (2000) – in revitalising a traditional functionalist argument – viewed deindustrialisation as the most critical single explanatory factor that explains the expansion of welfare policy in the post-1970s silver age of the welfare state.

Conceptualising East Asian Welfare Development

Most existing studies on East Asian welfare development are qualitative small-N studies that focus on the theoretical definition of ‘welfare development’, which results in a relative dearth of systematic comparative-historical analyses, aggravating replication and theory development. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) has been portrayed as a handy tool for dealing with these issues, as it allows researchers to expand the conceptualisation of East Asian welfare development beyond singular social expenditure, social rights and social outcomes approaches, and combine qualitative and quantitative data sources into a single indicator. Although a relatively young method, QCA has quickly become an established part of the methodological toolkit for comparative social policy analysis (Ferragina and Deeming, 2023). As explained elsewhere, fsQCA begins by specifying the key dimensions that are the focus of analysis and then proceeds by viewing each of these dimensions as a set in which the cases can have varying degrees of membership (Kühner et al., 2024).

The outcome fuzzy-set variable in this article is ‘welfare development’, conceptualised as the degree of policy expansion across six social policy dimensions: education, healthcare, family, old-age income protection, housing and passive labour market policy. In our previous work (Yang, 2018; Yang and Kühner, 2020), the six social policy areas were used to identify East Asian welfare ideal types and different degrees of welfare state change over the last three decades. Although these six social policy areas have distinct features that allow them to be classified as more ‘productive’ or ‘protective’ (Hudson and Kühner, 2012), we consider them equally significant for constructing East Asian welfare systems. A comprehensive description of the coding strategy, encompassing the selection of policy domains, indicators within each domain and specific time points selected for analysis, is provided in Appendix 1, available in the Online Supplemental Materials accompanying this article.

Table 1 shows the fuzzy scores of all six social policy areas, where ‘0.00’ stands for ‘full non-membership’, and ‘1.00’ stands for ‘full membership’ for each examined set. The score of each welfare dimension was calculated using the average of constituent indicators. For example, for education services, in 1990, China received a fuzzy score of ‘0.93’ in education spending, ‘0.75’ in education generosity, and ‘1.00’ in education accessibility. The resulting fuzzy-set score of the education service in China in 1990, that is, ‘0.89’, was computed as the average of these three individual scores. Furthermore, for the ‘welfare development’ outcome, the number of social policy dimensions with membership scores higher than ‘0.50’ was counted to compose the fuzzy set for further analysis. If an East Asian economy scores over ‘0.50’ in one dimension, which means being ‘in’ this dimension, this indicates that it has performed comparatively ‘well’ in this particular social policy area. Following this logic, we created a fixed seven-value fuzzy set for the subsequent analysis:

‘1.00’ is ‘fully in’ the welfare development set: The fuzzy scores of the six social policy areas are all above ‘0.50’; this indicates that the case has a good performance in all six aspects of its welfare system.

‘0.83’ is ‘almost fully in’ the welfare development set: The fuzzy scores of five social policy areas are above ‘0.50’; this indicates that the case has comprehensive social policy development, with only one of the six social policy areas being less developed.

‘0.67’ is ‘fairly in’ the welfare development set: The fuzzy scores of four social policy areas are above ‘0.50’; this indicates that more social policy areas are ‘in’ than are ‘out’.

‘0.51’ is ‘more or less in’ the welfare development set: The fuzzy scores of three social policy areas are above ‘0.50’; this indicates the case is ‘in’ the set for half of the social policy areas.

‘0.33’ is ‘fairly out’ of the welfare development set: The fuzzy scores of two social policy areas are above ‘0.50’; this indicates that more social policy areas are ‘out’ than are ‘in’.

‘0.17’ is ‘almost fully out’ of the welfare development set: The fuzzy score of one social policy area is above ‘0.50’.

‘0.00’ is ‘fully out’ of the welfare development set: The fuzzy scores of none of the social policy areas are above ‘0.50’.

Table 1.

Fuzzy Scores of Social Policy Areas and the Welfare Development, 2000–2021.

Cases	Year	Education	Health	Family	Old-Age Income Protection	Housing	Passive Labour Market	Welfare Development
China	2000	0.60	0.04	0.54	0.28	0.34	0.76	0.51
	2010	0.51	0.37	0.55	0.31	0.41	0.77	0.51
	2021	0.58	0.42	0.73	0.49	0.55	0.79	0.67
Hong Kong	2000	0.91	0.65	0.46	0.78	1.00	0.02	0.67
	2010	0.96	0.70	0.46	0.82	1.00	0.02	0.67
	2021	0.74	0.68	0.48	0.81	1.00	0.37	0.67
Japan	2000	0.39	0.99	0.39	0.81	0.39	0.46	0.33
	2010	0.37	1.00	0.44	0.81	0.36	0.44	0.33
	2021	0.49	1.00	0.44	0.81	0.45	0.51	0.51
Korea	2000	0.48	0.38	0.57	0.31	0.45	0.39	0.17
	2010	0.66	0.41	0.57	0.83	0.55	0.47	0.67
	2021	0.66	0.37	0.57	0.79	0.60	0.69	0.83
Singapore	2000	0.92	0.34	0.44	0.20	1.00	0.02	0.33
	2010	0.93	0.38	0.55	0.37	1.00	0.02	0.51
	2021	0.63	0.62	0.58	0.36	1.00	0.02	0.67
Taiwan	2000	0.59	0.50	0.48	0.46	0.00	0.79	0.33
	2010	0.68	0.50	0.48	0.96	0.10	0.79	0.51
	2021	0.67	0.50	0.48	0.97	0.51	0.79	0.67

For example, China in 2000 had three welfare dimensions with membership scores higher than ‘0.50’, including education, family and the passive labour market policy. Therefore, the membership score of the ‘welfare development’ outcome for China in 2000 was ‘more or less in’ (‘0.51’) the ‘welfare development’ set. By 2021, China added housing to the social policy areas with membership scores higher than ‘0.5’, resulting in a membership score of ‘0.67’ or ‘fairly in’ the outcome set.

Following this logic for all six East Asian economies for the three time points (2000, 2010 and 2021), our analysis demonstrates an expansion of East Asian ‘welfare development’, underlining a general departure from East Asian governments from their ‘productivist’ roots. The most significant expansion was apparent in the developmental-universalist productive welfare types: South Korea, which has increased the number of its welfare dimensions with membership scores higher than ‘0.50’ from one (family) social policy area in 2000 to five in 2021. Similarly, Taiwan had two social policy areas with membership scores higher than ‘0.50’ in 2000 (education and passive labour market policy). It increased this number to four (education, old-age income protection, housing and passive labour market policy) by 2021. Japan, ‘0.51’ or ‘more or less in’, has maintained its historically well-developed healthcare services and old-age income protection while moderately improving its passive labour market policies since the early 2000s. These East Asian economies have further extended existing social rights beyond the productive elements of the population, and social policy has systematically taken a more systematic role alongside the market and families.

Characterised as a facilitative, market-prioritising productive welfare type, Hong Kong has traditionally been regarded as comparatively weak regarding its family and, especially, passive labour market provision. However, it increased its overall ‘welfare development’ to ‘0.67’ (‘fairly in’) through significant investments in old-age income protection, adding to historically strong education, healthcare and public housing services. Furthermore, Singapore’s developmental-particularist welfare type centred on its mandatory provident fund (Central Provident Fund, CPF) based strictly on individual contributions has been on a similar expansionary development path. Accordingly, Singapore in 2021 is characterised as ‘fairly in’ the ‘welfare development’ outcome set via healthcare service and family provision expansions adding to the historically well-developed social policy areas of education and housing and, crucially, extending access to social services to those outside the CPF system.

Although not included in Holliday’s (2000) original classification of productivist welfare types, pragmatic productivism in China was characterised by a continued emphasis on human capital investment in education and healthcare, rather than a shift towards comprehensive social protection (Mok et al., 2017). Despite various social policy initiatives, the core foundation of welfare production arguably remained focused on economic growth and labour market fluidity, leading to persistent regional fragmentation and welfare policy gaps among different groups within the Chinese population. However, China experienced radical shifts in its welfare model since the 1990s attributed to significant retrenchments in education and public housing, alongside expansions in old-age income protection, unemployment benefit policies and working family support, indicating a move away from a purely growth-oriented welfare policy orientation (Yang and Kühner, 2020). Having outlined our analytical trajectory and the findings on the expansion of East Asian ‘welfare development’ therein, we now turn to the socio-economic forces propelling East Asia’s welfare evolution – first by defining the conditions underpinning our fsQCA, ensuring methodological transparency before delving into their empirical implications.

Calibrating Conditions for East Asian Welfare Development

Five conditions were selected to capture shared socio-economic ‘problem pressures’ faced by the East Asian government, including economic performance (E), demographic change (D), globalisation (G), unemployment (U) and deindustrialisation (I). Economic performance was measured according to the level and change in economic growth, demographic change according to the share of the elderly population, globalisation according to the KOF economic globalisation index (Savina et al., 2019), unemployment according to the standard unemployment rate and deindustrialisation according to the share of employment in the service sector (Table 2).

Table 2.

Data Used to Establish the Fuzzy Sets of Conditions.

E	Economic performance: The level and change in economic growth
D	Demographic change: The share of the elderly population
G	Globalisation: KOF Economic globalisation index
U	Unemployment: The standard unemployment rate
I	Deindustrialisation: The percentage of employment in the service sector

Source: The level and change in economic growth, the percentage of the elderly population and the percentage of employment in service: The World Bank (2023); DGBAS (2011), own calculations. The rate of unemployment: ADB (2022). Economic globalisation: for five East Asian economies except Taiwan. According to UNCTAD (2016), for economic globalisation, among the six economies, Taiwan held the third position in the past three decades – lower than Hong Kong and Singapore but higher than others.

Before analysing the conditions of East Asian welfare developments with fsQCA, it is essential to calibrate the raw data of the five conditions to fuzzy scores. According to Ragin (2000), calibration assessments must be based on theoretical and substantive case knowledge. We determined 15 cutoff points for full membership (‘1.00’), full non-membership (‘0.00’) and the crossover point between membership and non-membership (‘0.50’) for the five conditions (E, D, G, U and I) based on three strategies: (1) a comparison and combination of raw indicators taken from statistical databases published by the OECD, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank; (2) definitions made by international organisations, such as United Nations and (3) case knowledge. For example, if a case scores ‘1.00’ in the Demographic change set (D), this means that this case is an ‘aged society’ according to UN standards (United Nations, 2019) as the share of the population aged over 65 exceeds 15% of the total population; if a case scores ‘0.00’ in the same set (d), it means this case has a comparatively young population structure. In this case, the lowest proportion of the population over 65 of the included East Asian economies was used. Finally, suppose an East Asian society is at the crossover point between membership and non-membership (‘0.50’). In that case, its population aged over 65 was 7% of the total population, an ageing society according to prevailing UN standards (United Nations, 2019). Table 3 displays how we calibrated the fuzzy-set scores of the five conditions for East Asian ‘welfare development’. The fuzzy-set scores for the five conditions are presented in Table 4. All fsQCA procedures were carried out using the software R (R Core Team, 2023) with the QCA Package (Dusa, 2019) and the SetMethods Package (Oana and Schneider, 2018). For additional robustness checks, including analyses using 5-year intervals and disaggregated policy fields, see Appendices 2a and 2b in the Online Supplemental Materials. These additional analyses further reinforce the substantive discussions in the remainder of this article.

Table 3.

Empirical Indicators and Fuzzy-Set Interval Scores of Five Conditions.

Fuzzy-set scores	E	U	D	G^a	I
1	Three years of positive economic growth, the average growth rate is higher than the East Asian average	7^c	UN’s definition of an ‘aged society’ (15)	Highest possible score (100)	80
0.83	Three years of positive economic growth, the average growth rate is lower than the East Asian average
0.67	Two years of positive economic growth, the average growth rate is higher than the East Asian average
0.5	Two years of positive economic growth, the average growth rate is lower than the East Asian average	Full employment benchmark (5)	UN definition of the ‘ageing society’ (7)	World averages^d	50
0.33	One year of positive economic growth, the average growth rate is higher than the East Asian average
0.17	One year of positive economic growth, the average growth rate is lower than the East Asian average
0	Three years of negative economic growth	Lowest scores of all cases^b	Lowest scores of all cases (5.2)	Lowest possible score (0)	20

Taiwan was classified based on case knowledge. ^b1990: 1.3, 2000: 3.0, 2010: 2.8, 2016: 2.8. ^c7: A 7% unemployment rate is considered a significant marker of labour market distress, often indicating economic downturns or crises, based on international benchmarks and studies. ^d2000: 53.97, 2010: 57.59, 2020 (the most current data available): 57.16.

Table 4.

Summary of All Fuzzy-Set Scores.

Cases	Year	Economic performance	Demographic change	Economic globalisation	Unemployment	Deindustrialisation
Cases	Year	E	D	G	U	I
China	2000	1	0.42	0.32	0.05	0.10
	2010	1	0.59	0.36	0.23	0.18
	2021	1	0.86	0.33	0.13	0.45
Hong Kong	2000	0.51	0.81	0.88	0.46	0.95
	2010	0.51	0.9	0.86	0.28	0.97
	2021	0.17	0.98	0.86	0.61	0.98
Japan	2000	0.17	0.98	0.47	0.39	0.79
	2010	0.17	1	0.51	0.52	0.88
	2021	0.17	1	0.66	0.02	0.91
Korea	2000	0.67	0.52	0.47	0.29	0.75
	2010	0.83	0.8	0.51	0.15	0.86
	2021	0.51	0.96	0.58	0.08	0.88
Singapore	2000	0.67	0.26	0.92	0.29	0.89
	2010	0.83	0.52	0.93	0.05	0.94
	2021	0.51	0.91	0.93	0.05	0.97
Taiwan	2000	1	0.64	0.68	0.05	0.62
	2010	0.83	0.8	0.69	0.54	0.70
	2021	1	0.96	0.68	0.14	0.72

Explaining East Asian Welfare Development with Fuzzy Sets

Necessary Conditions for East Asian Welfare Development

In fsQCA, each condition or combination of conditions is regarded as sufficient if the outcome occurs whenever the causal condition is present; they are considered necessary if the condition is present whenever the outcome is present. Since the outcome is a subset of the necessary conditions, testing necessary conditions is the first step for the standard fsQCA analysis (Kühner et al., 2024).

Table 5 shows the analysis results of the conditions for the ‘welfare development’ outcome. A condition should only be considered ‘necessary’ if its consistency score is very high (Ragin, 2006), measuring the degree to which a specific combination of explanatory conditions displays the outcome (Schneider and Wagemann, 2012). Thus, ‘0.95’ was used as the threshold for a condition to be necessary. Upper-case letters indicate the presence of a condition, and lower-case letters indicate the absence of a condition – for example, ‘E’ indicates a high economic performance, and ‘e’ indicates a low economic performance.

Table 5.

Analysis of Necessary Conditions for the ‘Welfare Development’ Outcome.

Conditions	Consistency¹	Coverage²	RON³
E	0.80	0.66	0.62
U	0.41	0.91	0.97
D	0.98	0.67	0.46
G	0.89	0.73	0.67
I	0.90	0.64	0.47
u dgie	0.95 0.330.560.380.50	0.67 0.800.840.810.75	0.49 0.950.920.940.88

RON = Relevance of Necessity; lower case letters in the conditions column denote the negation of the corresponding condition.

As Table 5 shows, two conditions passed the necessity benchmark, including a high degree of demographic change and a low unemployment rate, making these conditions necessary for East Asian welfare development. Figure 1 presents the results graphically. For a condition to be necessary, all cases should be located around or below the bisecting line (Ragin, 2000). Regarding demographic change, we note that only two cases are positioned above the line, and their proximity to it is relatively close. Regarding unemployment, a characteristic of East Asia’s economic miracle has been its traditionally low rates; the COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily shifted Hong Kong further away from the bisecting line in 2021.

Notably, economic performance fails to surpass the necessity threshold by a substantial margin (‘0.80’). This finding contrasts with the PWC thesis, which posited economic performance as the prerequisite of welfare development in East Asia and indicates that social policy can no longer be regarded as a subsidiary of economic growth. In other words, our findings suggest that welfare development occurred in the absence of high economic performance, questioning one of the fundamental tenets of the PWC thesis and providing another indication that we have indeed witnessed a ‘post-productive’ era of social policy making in East Asia since the turn of the 21st century.

Sufficient Conditions for East Asian Welfare Development

The next stage of the fsQCA procedure is the analysis of the causal conditions that were present when ‘welfare development’ occurred across our six East Asian economies. This is achieved through the truth-table algorithm, which transforms the fuzzy-set scores into a truth table to examine the relationship between all logically possible combinations of socio-economic conditions and the outcome of each configuration. Table 6 shows the truth table based on the fuzzy-set scores for economic performance (E), demographic change (D), economic globalisation (G), unemployment (U), deindustrialisation (I) and welfare development (W). The table also includes the sufficiency inclusion score, that is, the degree to which the fuzzy-set membership scores of all cases in combination are sufficient for the ‘welfare development’ outcome, and the proportional reduction in inconsistency (PRI) scores, which show whether there is a simultaneous subset relation between outcome and non-outcome. A sufficiency inclusion score cutoff point was used to determine whether a configuration set should receive a positive (1) or negative (0) score on the outcome. Ragin (2008) instructed that the sufficiency cutoff point should be over ‘0.75’, and the gap between the consistency scores could help determine the cutoff point. The truth table shows that the consistency scores dropped dramatically from ‘0.88’ to ‘0.83’. Consequently, we set the consistency threshold for sufficiency inclusion at ‘0.85’. Boolean algebra was used to minimise the truth table and identify the causal conditions sufficient for producing the outcome of East Asian ‘welfare development’. The results of the analysis of the sufficient conditions for the ‘welfare development’ outcome are displayed in Table 7. The enhanced parsimonious⁴ approach was used to produce this result.

Table 6.

Analysis of Sufficient Conditions for the ‘Welfare Development’ Outcome.

Solution	DG + Egu	→W
Coverage of cases	HK00&10&21JPN10&21KOR10&21SGP10&21TWN00&00&21	CHN00&10&21KOR00
Consistency	0.80	0.88
Raw coverage	0.88	0.51
Unique coverage	0.44	0.07
PRI⁵	0.53	0.55

Solution consistency: 0.79; PRI: 0.53.

Solution coverage: 0.95.

Table 7.

Truth Table.

Row	E	D	G	I	U	Outcome	Incl	PRI	N	Cases
32	1	1	1	1	1	1	0.95	0.50	1	TWN10
25	1	1	0	0	0	1	0.95	0.59	2	CHN10, CHN21
17	1	1	0	0	0	1	0.94	0.12	1	CHN00
27	1	1	0	1	0	1	0.92	0.60	1	KOR00
31	1	1	1	1	0	1	0.91	0.70	8	HK00&10, KOR10&21,SGP10&21, TWN00&TWN21
16	0	1	1	1	1	1	0.89	0.53	2	HK21, JPN10
15	0	1	1	1	0	1	0.88	0.60	1	JPN21
11	0	1	0	1	0	0	0.83	0.33	1	JPN00
23	1	0	1	1	0	0	0.79	0.00	1	SGP00

Incl = sufficient inclusion score; N = the number of cases with membership in the respective configuration higher than 0.5; Cases = the list of these cases; Row = the number of truth-table rows. The logical reminders are omitted.

The fsQCA found that East Asian welfare development was the product of a (high degree of demographic change AND high level of economic globalisation) OR (strong economic performance AND low level of economic globalisation AND low unemployment rate). In the fuzzy-set notion, where ‘+’ denotes logical OR, and ‘*’ denotes logical AND, the solution term is written as $D * G + E * g * u \to W .$ The consistency value⁶ of the solution term ( ‘0.79’) is satisfactory. In addition, both paths pass the consistency threshold of ‘0.75’, suggesting that either of the paths is sufficient but not necessary for the outcome. In addition, the coverage of the solution term (0.95), which indicates the degree to which the solution term is shared among all cases with the ‘welfare development’ outcome (Schneider and Wagemann, 2012), is notably extensive.

This finding reveals several critical results that add to the mainstream understanding of East Asian post-productivism. First, no single condition was individually sufficient for the ‘welfare development’ outcome, meaning that for the 18 cases captured in our study, East Asian welfare development could not occur under just one socio-economic condition. Second, there were two distinct paths towards East Asian welfare development. The first path (D*G) contains a high degree of demographic change but can affect welfare development only in conjunction with a high level of economic globalisation. Put differently, this highlights that the demographic transition towards an ageing population was empirically not an isolated driver of East Asian ‘welfare development’. Instead, demographic change had to be coupled with a high degree of economic globalisation to result in ‘welfare development’, possibly owing to the dependence of export-oriented East Asian economies on a dynamic and highly skilled workforce to maintain competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. Another interpretation might stress the compensation effects of high dependence on the global economy, including increased exposure to global welfare norms, perceived pressures of economic competitiveness, increased divisions between the winners and losers of globalisation and ensuing higher welfare attitudes among the East Asian general public. Table 8 presents the cases’ membership scores of the two paths and the outcomes.

Table 8.

Membership Scores of Cases in the Sufficient Paths.

Cases	Outcome Welfare development	D*G	Egu
CHN00	0.51	0.32	0.68
CHN10	0.51	0.36	0.64
CHN21	0.67	0.33	0.67
HK00	0.67	0.81	0.12
HK10	0.67	0.86	0.14
HK21	0.67	0.86	0.14
JPN00	0.33	0.47	0.17
JPN10	0.33	0.51	0.17
JPN21	0.51	0.66	0.17
KOR00	0.17	0.47	0.53
KOR10	0.67	0.51	0.49
KOR21	0.83	0.58	0.42
SGP00	0.33	0.26	0.08
SGP10	0.51	0.52	0.07
SGP21	0.67	0.93	0.07
TWN00	0.33	0.64	0.32
TWN10	0.51	0.69	0.31
TWN21	0.67	0.68	0.32

Cases ‘in’ a specific set are indicated in bold.

Table 9.

Comparison Between the Productivism, Post-Productivism and Empirical Findings of East Asian Cases 2000–2021.

Aspect	Productivist Welfare Capitalism	Post-productivism	Findings from QCA study
Economic focus	Emphasises economic growth and industrial development	Moves beyond economic focus to include broader issues of socio-economic stability	Economic growth was not a necessary condition but shifted towards socio-demographic factors
Globalisation impact	Globalisation acts as a tool to boost economic development	Increased consideration of the impact of globalisation on social welfare and societal stability	Globalisation plays a multifaceted role in welfare development. It promotes welfare development by enhancing adaptability to demographic shifts while also supporting welfare through socio-economic stability in the lower globalisation context.
Social policy	Supports the labour market and economic productivity	Prioritises welfare provision and quality of life, shifting away from economic productivity	Only in the China cases and Korea in 2000, welfare policy developments were against an economic growth background—whereas for all others the economy is no longer an impact factor.
Demographic considerations	Focuses more on productive labour force development and less on demographic shifts.	Addresses challenges like the ageing population and gender inequality in the workforce	The ageing population emerges as a key factor in welfare development.
Labour market dynamics	Significant emphasis on industrial development, with a larger proportion of the workforce employed in the manufacturing sector	Shift towards the service sector, reflecting the deindustrialisation process	Deindustrialisation is an important factor with a high necessity consistency score, but it is not a necessary condition and does not appear in solution paths.
Response to socio-economic changes	Focus mainly on economic development	Balances economic goals with social welfare needs	Indicates a shift towards addressing broader social challenges through welfare policy

While the first solution path (D*G) encompasses the majority of cases, the second path (E*g*u) includes China’s three distinct instances (2000; 2010; 2021) and Korea in 2000. This finding suggests that China’s approach to welfare development diverged noticeably from that of its East Asian neighbours. As Holliday (2000) did not include China in his original analysis of PWC in East Asia, one might conclude that China maintained its own unique path towards ‘welfare development’. Moreover, this ongoing divergence underscores the complexity of comparing welfare systems within the same welfare regime and gives credence to existing studies that emphasise the divergence of social inputs and outcomes within the East Asian welfare geography (Kühner, 2015). Moreover, the condition of globalisation in both solution paths, but in contrasting directions, underscores its crucial influence on regional welfare development. This dual manifestation reflects the multifaceted impact of globalisation – on the one hand, fostering welfare development through economic integration, exposure to global norms and changing welfare attitudes and, on the other, presenting unique challenges that necessitate adaptations in welfare policies. The varied influence of globalisation in these paths highlights its complex role as both a driver and a modifier of welfare strategies within East Asia’s diverse socio-economic landscape.

In combining the various threads in the aforementioned findings, it becomes apparent that solution paths underscore a transition from a singular ‘productivist’ focus on economic growth to a more multifaceted approach considering the broader socio-economic context in the region. The demographic challenge, marked by an ageing population, demanded a reorientation of welfare policies to address the needs of an increasingly elderly demographic and adjustments of the East Asian care model. Economic globalisation brought both opportunities and challenges, necessitating adaptive social policies sensitive to local context and stages of economic development. Finally, our findings substantiate the ‘post-productivist’ transition in East Asia, demonstrating that these conditions, i.e., population ageing and economic globalisation, have emerged as principal catalysts for the region’s welfare expansion.

Discussion

The earlier sections showed that our interpretation of East Asian ‘welfare development’ indicates that welfare policies in East Asia are expanding in ways that do not fit neatly into the original categories of facilitative, developmental-universalist and developmental-particularist PWC models. Furthermore, we showed that our fsQCA challenges the PWC thesis, which argues that economic performance is the main driver of welfare development in East Asia. Instead, our analysis suggests that welfare policy is no longer subordinate to economic growth, challenging one of the conceptual distinctions between Eastern and Western forms of welfare capitalism since the publication of Holliday’s (2000) formulation of the PWC thesis. Finally, our empirical analysis indicates that the trajectory of welfare development in East Asia is increasingly decoupled from economic growth dynamics. Instead, our findings suggest that demographic transitions and extensive economic globalisation have become the primary drivers of welfare development in the region. Moreover, we identify an alternative pathway characterised by robust economic performance, limited economic globalisation and low unemployment rates, which highlights the distinctive and enduring features of welfare development in China. Collectively, these findings offer a comprehensive and systematic delineation of East Asian ‘post-productivism’ era that has hitherto remained elusive.

The high consistency and comprehensive coverage of the solution term suggest that the conditions identified in the fsQCA model are highly pertinent and capture the key factors driving welfare development in the post-productive period. However, three cases (JPN10, SGP00, TWN00) with the ‘welfare development’ outcome should have shown a high membership score of the solution paths, but they did not. These are deviant cases in terms of consistency of outcome and are located in the lower right quadrant in Figure 2. They present a true logical contradiction, which suggests that some other factors may have prevented a more comprehensive welfare system from developing. Methodologically, this final step of the fsQCA analysis offers a crucial opportunity to capture potentially significant omitted conditions through comprehensive and detailed case analysis.

The economic difficulties in Japan may explain the situation discussed. Among the East Asian economies covered in this article, Japan was most severely affected by the financial crises of 1997–98 and 2008. After the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis, Japan took longer to recover and was the only economy among the six studied that was still in recession in 1999. Even using a relatively generous benchmark (e.g. a 2% GDP growth rate), Japan underperformed economically for over a decade starting in the 1990s. This period, known as the ‘Great Recession’ (Kuttner and Posen, 2001), led to numerous public stimulatory packages aimed at revitalising the economy. By the end of March 2004, the combined debts of the central and local governments had risen to 7.0 trillion yen, over 150% of GDP (Tang, 2007). To address the growing debt, the government reduced funding for public housing, leading to a decline in public housing construction. In May 1996, the Publicly Operated Housing Act was amended, abolishing the classification of public housing and lowering the income criterion for eligibility to cover only the lowest 25% of the population, compared to 33% in the 1970s (Tiwari and Hasegawa, 2001). In addition, the standard for public housing rent changed from being based on construction costs to being dependent on tenants’ income and housing location. Consequently, households with an income above the criterion had to pay market rent. In 2005, the government terminated the five-year housing construction plan, halting the construction of new public rental houses. After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the latest public housing policy ended the Japanese government’s direct involvement in providing housing services to those experiencing poverty. Without significant expansions in other social policy areas, these housing policy retrenchments meant that Japan’s ‘welfare development’ score remained at ‘0.33’ during the 2000s, despite further opening its economy to global markets amid exceptionally high rates of population ageing.

In South Korea and Taiwan, political factors play a crucial role in explaining the contradictory findings. Both countries have a history of authoritarianism and underwent significant political changes with the push towards democratisation in the late 1990s (Haggard and Kaufman, 2008). In South Korea, social policies were initially controlled by elite institutions and favoured executive and privileged groups, such as regular workers in key industries, under conservative governments with limited interest in welfare development. Although the economy quickly recovered after a sharp decline in growth rates, the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis paved the way for the centre-left party, led by long-time opposition leader Kim Dae-Jung, to gain political power (Kwon and Holliday, 2006). This election was a milestone in South Korean democracy, leading to significant social policy reforms, including the introduction of the National Pension Programme, the Master Plan for Tackling Unemployment, National Health Insurance and the Minimum Living Standard Guarantee, which marked substantial improvements in Korean welfare development (Croissant, 2002). In Taiwan, the Kuomintang (KMT) government dominated from 1945 to 1987, adopting Japan’s developmental strategy to promote full employment through export-oriented industries. This approach aimed to improve living standards and political stability via economic growth. Consequently, social policy legislation was driven by political considerations rather than public needs. For instance, in 1988, only 0.1% of Taiwan’s social expenditure was allocated to labour welfare, while 63% went to military welfare (Goodman and Peng, 1996). Political competition began in 1986 with the formation of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Electoral pressure prompted the conservative government to shift from being a welfare ‘regulator’ to a ‘provider’, leading to the establishment of the National Health Insurance programme in 1995. Welfare services expanded further when the DPP came to power in 2000, introducing a universal non-contributory pension system. As a result, by 2003, public expenditure on social security and welfare (24.4%) surpassed spending on health and education (13.2%), defence (14.9%) and economic development (19.7%), and it has remained the highest area of public expenditure to date (ADB, 2022).

Unlike the convergence approach that regards general nomothetic characteristics as essential in welfare state-building (Takegawa, 2009), the fsQCA shows that there are four INUS conditions (E, D, G, U) for East Asian welfare development, i.e. insufficient but necessary parts of a solution path which itself is unnecessary but sufficient for the outcome, that impacted East Asian welfare development only when combined with other elements. In simple terms, East Asia’s welfare development was not the result of a single general rule that applied to each case but instead of a specific mix of conditions that had to work together to produce unique local outcomes. Finally, the higher unique coverage values of the path D*G (0.44) indicate that it is more critical than E*g*u (0.07). Again, more simply put, our analysis found two different ‘recipes’ (i.e. combinations of factors) that explain welfare development in East Asia; yet the first path (D*G) is far more influential than the second (E*g*u) because it applies to many more cases. Moreover, the presence of globalisation in both paths suggests that the influence of globalisation is a pivotal and multifaceted factor in shaping regional welfare development. It reflects how globalisation, through economic integration and exposure to global standards, not only brings opportunities and resources that can enhance welfare systems but also introduces new complexities and challenges that require adaptive policy responses. This dual role of globalisation underlines its significance as a critical determinant in East Asia’s evolving social welfare landscape and cautions against blanket conclusions on the veracity of the ‘efficiency’ and ‘compensation’ theories of globalisation, respectively. The local context and stage of economic development appear to matter above all. Ultimately, the integration of East Asian economies has been identified as a dual force – it enhances welfare development by combining with the demographic shift while supporting the reform through socio-economic stability in less globalised contexts. This multifaceted role of globalisation demonstrates its significance in the transition from PWC to post-productivism in East Asia. It also underscores the critical significance of emerging ‘de-globalisation’ narratives for the future evolution of East Asian welfare systems after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last but not least, this article sets out to empirically re-examine the productivism and post-productivism debate with fsQCA and reports several innovative findings that suggest a shift from the PWC since the turn of the 21st century. This is, of course, not to argue that all productive elements have entirely disappeared from consideration. The influence of the productivist legacy is visible in the institutional design of welfare development. Moreover, the fact that we found the absence of high unemployment as a necessary condition for East Asian welfare development indicates that a strong work ethic and emphasis on self-reliance remain essential aspects of social rights expansions in East Asian welfare geography. As was pointed out elsewhere (Kühner and Shi, 2023), although probably the most salient issue in the East Asian mainstream public discourse, the other necessary condition of demographic change tends to be much more firmly framed in the context of its economic consequences, namely the loss of female human capital, shrinking East Asian labour forces and the promises of the ‘silver economy’, rather than in terms of its root causes in the gendered nature of the East Asian care model, persistent gendered labour market outcomes, and the production and reproduction of gender equality across East Asian economies.

Ultimately, these findings allow us to conclude by outlining the specific characteristics of PWC compared to the post-productivism era in more detail (Table 9). Whereas the PWC thesis emphasised economic growth and industrial development, post-productivism has clearly moved beyond a sole economic growth focus and includes broader socio-economic stability concerns. Whereas social policy under the PWC was strictly subordinate to economic policy, the priorities under post-productivism shifted to include quality-of-life issues and, notably, also new beneficiary groups and welfare policy issues, including urban development and environmental sustainability. Whereas PWC focused more on labour force development and less on demographic shifts, the post-productivism period addressed the ageing populations and changing demographic structures influencing labour markets, consumption patterns and welfare policies more directly. Indeed, demographic change emerged as a critical condition for East Asian welfare development, according to our analysis. Finally, whereas globalisation, particularly export-led growth, acted as a tool to catch up with more advanced Western economies during the PWC period, post-productivism put much more emphasis on the adverse impact of globalisation on social welfare and stability. Generally, our analysis indicates a significant shift towards addressing broader social challenges via welfare development, whereas the PWC period focused much more directly on economic development. Consequently, these characteristics epitomise a profound transformation in the economic and social fabric of East Asian societies, as they transcend the traditional PWC model. This evolution reflects a nuanced shift towards balancing rapid industrialisation with the imperative to address emergent welfare needs driven by population ageing and the forces of economic globalisation.

Conclusion

Compared to Western scholarship, the relationship between macro-level socio-economic conditions and welfare development has been studied much less systematically for the East Asian region. Following the predominant grand theories in comparative social policy scholarship, this article offered a novel attempt to propose five possible causal conditions for welfare development in six East Asian economies: economic performance, demographic change, unemployment, economic globalisation and deindustrialisation. The fsQCA in this article bridges the theoretical gap between PWC and ‘post-productivism’ by providing systematic empirical evidence of the shifting role of economic and socio-demographic factors in shaping welfare policy development in East Asia. The study, therefore, contributes to a deeper understanding of how contemporary East Asian societies are adapting to new economic conditions and social challenges. Unlike Holliday (2005), among others, who merely saw the beginnings of a ‘post-productivist’ era of East Asian social policy, this article shows that a shift from East Asian productivism to post-productivism has already occurred.

This finding carries significant potential implications for the field of comparative and international social policy analysis, as well as for the broader discourses within political science and international relations. First, a ‘post-productivist’ turn suggests that the East Asian welfare regime may be converging with Western models, particularly in response to analogous social and economic challenges such as ageing populations, declining birth rates, and labour market changes resulting from the integration in the global knowledge economy. Second, implicit in our discussions in this article is the notion that ‘post-productivism’ implies a greater focus on social rights and welfare entitlements, moving away from the strict subordination of welfare to economic goals. This shift aligns East Asian welfare systems more closely with the principles of decommodification and social protection found in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) typology and implies that East Asian welfare regimes are no longer fundamentally distinct. Third, traditional East Asian welfare regimes have historically depended predominantly on family-based welfare provision, with the state assuming a residual role. A transition to a ‘post-productivist’ regime, as articulated in this article, entails a significant increase in state intervention and a concomitant reduction in familial reliance, thereby mirroring shifts in social structures and the evolving (re)production of gender roles. Fourth, the concept of ‘post-productivism’ embodies a response to emergent social risks, such as precarious employment, care deficits and income inequality, which are not confined to East Asia but are of a global nature. The emergence of certain East Asian welfare systems as global frontrunners in addressing these challenges – for instance, through the implementation of progressive parental leave policies in Japan and Korea and the establishment of mandatory provident funds in Singapore and Hong Kong – further indicates a significant blurring of the traditional delineations between East Asian and Western care models. Finally, the shift towards ‘post-productivism’ in East Asia may also signify broader political and ideational transformations, such as democratisation, heightened demands for social justice and the influence of global welfare norms. These developments contest the notion that the East Asian welfare regime is intrinsically linked to a distinctive cultural and institutional context.

Although we consider this article a vital step in re-examining PWC and the post-productive period that followed it since the 2000s, we hope it will motivate others to expand on our conclusions. Indeed, despite the various contributions this article offers, at least four limitations directly point to much-needed further advancements in the analysis of East Asian welfare development. First, scholars have argued that legacies of class competition and partisanship primarily influence welfare policies (Brooks and Manza, 2006; Esping-Andersen, 1990). However, this article did not consider partisan competition hypotheses because only three of the six societies are commonly understood as representing fully-fledged democracies. Even within those societies with high democracy scores, mainstream distinctions between ‘left’ and ‘right’ partisanship cannot be easily applied. Second, the role of civil society in pushing for progressive welfare expansion in East Asia has been widely recognised. Yet, comparative measures for its political influence and ideological orientation have been elusive. Conditions that would adequately capture the influence of local and international non-profit organisations could, therefore, similarly not be included. Third, the idea of institutionally constructed preferences leads to the ‘new institutionalist’ argument that existing institutions shape collective political attitudes and behaviour through the actions of individuals. Future research will be able to more adequately include the lock-in effects and path dependencies of pre-existing formal and informal institutions among the conditions of East Asian welfare development than was feasible at this occasion. Fourth, the inclusion of causal mechanisms is increasingly essential for understanding the development of welfare regimes, particularly in East Asia. Process tracing methods allow for detailed depictions of social policy processes, highlighting the critical actors involved and their interactions, which can lead to more generalised conclusions beyond the identification of socio-economic drivers of welfare state change.

The concept of a post-productivist welfare regime contests the notion of East Asian exceptionalism by underscoring the dynamic and evolving nature of welfare systems within the region. This perspective suggests that the East Asian welfare regime has been progressively adapting to global trends and pressures, thereby challenging the perception of static East Asian welfare models and highlighting the fluidity and adaptability of individual welfare systems in an increasingly globalised context. The real test for future comparative analysis of welfare development will be how it combines the lessons from grand theories, detailed local case knowledge, further global data investments and the latest methodological advances to develop more comprehensive frameworks facilitating theory development based on empirical cases in the East Asian region and beyond.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217251369291 – Supplemental material for From Productivism to Post-Productivism: Unpacking the Socio-Economic Conditions for Welfare Development in Six East Asian Economies

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217251369291 for From Productivism to Post-Productivism: Unpacking the Socio-Economic Conditions for Welfare Development in Six East Asian Economies by Nan Yang and Stefan Kühner in Political Studies

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We extend our sincere appreciation to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback and constructive critiques, which significantly strengthened this article. Any remaining omissions or errors are solely our responsibility.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies under the Asian Issue Research Project (Grant No. Y202310) and by the Higher Education Basic Scientific Research Platform Construction Project of the Liaoning Provincial Department of Education (Digital Social Policy Simulation Research Platform). We extend our sincere gratitude to these institutions for their generous support. Lingnan University, Faculty Research Grant (Grant No. 103425).

ORCID iDs

Nan Yang

Stefan Kühner

Supplemental material

Additional supplementary information may be found with the online version of this article.

Appendix 1: Welfare Development Coding Strategy

Table 1 Summary of indicators and measurement criteria

Appendix 2a: Robustness Check by Using 5-Year Time Interval

Table 2 Sufficient solution paths

Appendix 2b: Robustness Check by Using Disaggregated Policy Fields

Table 3 Necessary conditions of six policy areas

Notes

Author Biographies

Nan Yang is Associate Professor in Public Management at Liaoning University, China. Her work focuses on comparative East Asian social policy, including welfare development and fertility, using set-theoretic methods. She is an Executive Committee Member of the East Asian Social Policy Research Network.

Stefan Kühner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, where he directs the MSocSc Programme in Comparative Social Policy. His research examines the political economy of welfare, exploring how governments reform their social policies to respond to emerging social risks in contemporary society. He is an Executive Committee Member of the East Asian Social Policy Research Network.

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