Public and private old-age security arrangements in Asia and Europe

Leiden, the Netherlands - This seminar will confront challenges and dilemmas faced by many governments in East and Southeast Asia.

5-8 September 2007, Campus The Hague, Leiden University at The Hague, the Netherlands

Joint conference organised by National Science Council (NSC), Taipei, Taiwan / International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden, the Netherlands

Convenors
Prof. CHENG Li-Chen, Department of Social Work, National Taiwan University
Prof. Carla Risseeuw, Department of Anthropology and Development Sociology,
Leiden University, the Netherlands

During the 21st century it is projected that there will be more than one billion people aged 60 and over. This will actually reach nearly two billion by 2050, of whom three-quarters will live in the less-developed world. The bulk of the ageing population will reside in Asia. Ageing in Asia is attributable to the marked declines in fertility shown over the last 40 years and the steady increase in life-expectancy. In Western Europe, where the development of ageing populations came at a slower pace and could initially be incorporated into welfare policy provisions, governments are currently aiming to trim and reduce government financed social welfare and health-care, including pensions systems, unleashing substantial public debate and experienced insecurity. Many governments in East and Southeast Asia are confronted with comparable challenges and dilemmas, involving both the State and the family, but which - comparatively - need to be addressed within a much shorter time-span. In short, both sets of nations are reviewing their social contract with their people.

How is the well-being of ageing populations/older adults to be achieved? How is policy to fine-tune the degree of formal support systems in contrast to informal and/or commercial care-systems? In how far are Governments to be expected to provide quality care provisions for citizens without family support circles, whose numbers are rising because of industrialisation, migration and globalisation? What forms of cooperation are found between government and private local or commercial initiatives? What makes Governments choose to promote, allow, or inhibit the entry of trans-national care-workers and what forms of job and income security are created in this context? To which extent are citizens expected to rely on their own informal support systems of family, community or other social arrangements and, even more relevantly, to what degree can these support systems be assumed to remain constant over time and through life-phases? In how far are such processes gendered and how is the disparity in security of elderly (widowed) women, in both East and West, to be addressed? Social and cultural issues play a large role but how are such issues to be analysed and compared? This leads to questions about the (often unseen) dynamics within families: in same-living arrangements as well as probing the local meanings/interpretations of religion, morality/philosophy, care, well-being and security and notions of personhood and sociality.

Learning from the approaches of different countries to the shifting demographic build-up of societies, both between Western European and East & Southeast Asian countries and between countries in each region, will be an essential contribution to a acquiring a deeper understanding of the situation and consequently to developing lasting solutions and new approaches, at the level of State policy; local social and religious initiatives; and commercial ventures and socio-cultural family and kin systems. Locally shared meanings of concepts as vulnerability, security, dependency, protection, entitlement and obligation tend to reflect specific cultural and religious philosophies, but also manifest new and changing meanings over time.

For further information
Dr Manon Osseweijer, IIAS, [email protected]

http://www.iias.nl/index.php?q=node/388

From 05 Sep 2007
Until 05 Sep 2007
Leiden, the Netherlands
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