Flexible Welfare Policy

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HSS2001-L01 Transitions in Hong Kong Society Individual essay Chan Ho Yin 15002997 Rethinking flexible welfare strategy in Hong Kong: a new direction for the East Asian welfare model? Since 1980, many Asian countries or cities had experienced economic growth, and there is great development of welfare system in this period of time. East Asian welfare politics focusing on the idea of Productivist(Good et al. 1998, Gough 2001) and a Confucian culture (Jones 1993) that Asian states can increase productivity , economic competitiveness, and decrease the expenditure of welfare. However, the following crisis, including Asian financial crisis, global financial tsunami, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), cause negative impact on these Asian…show more content…
Rapidly grow of the economic also raise the demand of the disadvantaged group of citizens. Government used to maintain flexible welfare strategy as cash subsidies, but it sometimes can only temporarily solve the problem. Moreover, the strategy may cause more conflict and create more serious problems. For example, “scheme $6000” one of the flexible welfare strategy that Hong Kong Government gave HK$6000 to citizens who has Hong Kong Identity Card and lower than $10000 income in 2011. This policy is made to protect the citizens’ retirement life and alleviate other problems, from example, unemployment, poverty, single family, ageing population, or insufficient housing. In fact, the budget of flexible welfare strategy is significantly increasing for the flexible welfare strategy(HKSAR, various years), the strategy expenditure is very costly and may be more costly in the future. In addition, since the flexible welfare strategy is one-off relief, the benefit is reduced by the inflation. For instance, increasing the price of electricity and transportation. Moreover, the strategy may not eliminate the issues, and it may also cause some other problems. Specifically, there was an argument if the “scheme $6000” should benefit to new arrivals from mainland China. This debate lead to the negative impact because of the labelling recipients. As the consequence, it…show more content…
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