The Politics of Investing in Families: Comparing Family Policy Expansion in Japan and South Korea

Family policy addresses some of the important challenges of post-industrial societies, and it presents an important dimension of the recent transformation of advanced welfare capitalism. This article analyses the development of family policy in the two East Asian latecomer countries of Japan and South Korea, where we witness significant policy expansion starting in the 1990s – with the latter displaying much bolder expansion and defamilisation. Explaining the difference in policy expansion, we show that the Korean electorate displays a much stronger pro-welfare orientation, which produced an environment for much fiercer party competition on the grounds of social and family policy.