Welfare states and care arrangements: Care time mix approach and its application to Japan and Korea

Abstract

This article suggests how notions of replacing, supplementing and valuing care by the family can be linked with policy instruments of childcare services, leave provisions, and cash for care by family, to influence care arrangements at collective and individual levels. It analyses care arrangements in Japan and Korea, estimating their changes over approximately ten years using the care time mix approach. The findings suggest that at the beginning of the new millennium, care arrangements in both countries were configured as female>non-state>male>state. A decade later, Japan remains the same, whereas Korea has become a paid care economy configured as non-state>female>male>state. Unpaid care economy remains gendered, but over time, Japanese men's contribution has marginally increased, with the opposite being true in Korea. The article discusses what the transformation of the paid care economy in Korea, and its expansion in Japan, imply for social structures in the respective countries.