The unprecedented progress of East Asia Pacific is a triumph of working people. Countries that were low-income a generation ago successfully integrated into the global value chain, exploiting their labor-cost advantage. In 1990, the region held about a third of the world’s labor force. Leveraging this comparative advantage, the share of global GDP of emerging economies in East Asia Pacific grew from 7 percent in 1992 to 17 percent in 2011. Yet, the region now finds itself at a critical juncture. Work and its contribution to growth and well-being can no longer be taken for granted. The challenges range from high youth inactivity and rising inequality to binding skills shortages. A key underlying issue is economic informality, which constrains innovation and productivity, limits the tax base, and increases household vulnerability to shocks. Informality is both a consequence of stringent labor regulations and limited enforcement capacity. In several countries, de jure employment regulations are more stringent than in many parts of Europe. Even labor regulations set at reasonable levels but poorly implemented can aggravate the market failures they were designed to overcome. This report argues that the appropriate policy responses are to ensure macroeconomic stability, and in particular, a regulatory framework that encourages small- and medium-sized enterprises where most people in the region work. Mainly agrarian countries should focus on raising agricultural productivity. In urbanizing countries, good urban planning becomes critical. Pacific island countries will need to provide youth with human capital needed to succeed abroad as migrant workers. And, across the region, it is critical to ‘formalize’ more work, to increase the coverage of essential social protection, and to sustain productivity. To this end, policies should encourage mobility of labor and human capital, and not favor some forms of employment - for instance, full-time wage employment in manufacturing - over others, either implicitly or explicitly. Policies to increase growth and well-being from employment should instead reflect and support the dynamism and diversity of work forms across the region.

In this singular collection, indigenous experts describe the social welfare systems of fifteen East Asian and Pacific Island nations and locales. Vastly understudied, these lands offer key insight into the successes and failures of Western and native approaches to social work, suggesting new directions for practice and research in both local and global contexts. Combining international experiences and professional knowledge, contributors illuminate the role of history and culture in shaping the social welfare systems of Cambodia, China, Hong Kong (SAR, China), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Micronesian region (including the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam [Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.], Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands [Commonwealth, U.S.A.], and Palau), Samoa and American Samoa (Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.), South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The contributors link the values and issues that concern populaces most to the development of social work practice, policy, and research. Sharlene B. C. L. Furuto then conducts a comparative analysis of the essays including their data and social service programs, highlighting the similarities and differences between the evolution of social welfare in these nations and locales. She contrasts their indigenous approaches, the responses of governments and NGOs to social issues, the availability of social work education, as well as API models, paradigms, and templates, and the overall status of the social work profession. Furuto also adds a chapter comparing the distinct social welfare systems of Samoa and American Samoa. The only volume to focus exclusively on social welfare in East Asia and the Pacific, this anthology holds immense value for practitioners and researchers eager for global perspectives.

This book provides a comparative analysis of the social, economic, industrial and migration dynamics that structure women’s paid work and unpaid care work experience in the Asia-Pacific region. Each country-focused chapter examines the formal and informal ways in which work and care are managed, the changing institutional landscape, gender relations and fertility concerns, employer and trade union responses and the challenges policy makers face and the consequences of their decisions for working women. By covering the entire region, including Australia and New Zealand, the book highlights the way different national work and care regimes are linked through migration, with wealthier countries looking to their poorer neighbours for alternative sources of labour. In addition, the book contributes to debates about the barriers to women’s participation in the workforce, the valuation of unpaid care, the gender wage gap, social protection and labour regulation for migrant workers and gender relations in developing Asia.

"Written by Emanuela di Gropello (lead author), Prateek Tandon, and Shahid Yusuf, with significant contributions from many others."--P. xv.

The unprecedented progress of East Asia Pacific is a triumph of working people. Countries that were low-income a generation ago successfully integrated into the global value chain, exploiting their labor-cost advantage. In 1990, the region held about a third of the world’s labor force. Leveraging this comparative advantage, the share of global GDP of emerging economies in East Asia Pacific grew from 7 percent in 1992 to 17 percent in 2011. Yet, the region now finds itself at a critical juncture. Work and its contribution to growth and well-being can no longer be taken for granted. The challenges range from high youth inactivity and rising inequality to binding skills shortages. A key underlying issue is economic informality, which constrains innovation and productivity, limits the tax base, and increases household vulnerability to shocks. Informality is both a consequence of stringent labor regulations and limited enforcement capacity. In several countries, de jure employment regulations are more stringent than in many parts of Europe. Even labor regulations set at reasonable levels but poorly implemented can aggravate the market failures they were designed to overcome. This report argues that the appropriate policy responses are to ensure macroeconomic stability, and in particular, a regulatory framework that encourages small- and medium-sized enterprises where most people in the region work. Mainly agrarian countries should focus on raising agricultural productivity. In urbanizing countries, good urban planning becomes critical. Pacific island countries will need to provide youth with human capital needed to succeed abroad as migrant workers. And, across the region, it is critical to ‘formalize’ more work, to increase the coverage of essential social protection, and to sustain productivity. To this end, policies should encourage mobility of labor and human capital, and not favor some forms of employment - for instance, full-time wage employment in manufacturing - over others, either implicitly or explicitly. Policies to increase growth and well-being from employment should instead reflect and support the dynamism and diversity of work forms across the region.

This volume investigates the links between employment, trade and structural transformation. In the context of global rebalancing, accompanied by inevitable changes in trade patterns between Asia and the rest of the world, the volume's chapters analyze the links between trade openness and trends in employment and its quality. Specifically, through Asian case studies (both analytical and econometric), the volume examines how trade and export-led growth models have led to specialization and evolving demands on various types of labor. The rapidly changing labor market contours in developing Asia during this era of globalization, along with the new context resulting from the recent global financial crisis and new insights from theoretical literature, have led to the need for such studies. This volume helps fill this gap in the literature.