Social Security Reforms in China: Problems and Prospects
Joe C. B.
Leung
Head, Department
of Social Work and Social Administration
University
of Hong Kong
The phenomenal
successes of China's market-oriented economic reforms since the
1980s have made the traditional employment-based social security
system increasingly inadequate and inefficient. For decades, the
Chinese government has tried to develop a more pluralistic, effective
and affordable social security system, compatible with an emergent
market economy and a monolithic socialist political structure.
While the new system is still struggling with a variety of operational
problems, the imminent entry of China into the WTO has posed a
formidable and looming challenge to the Chinese government to
establish a viable social security system. This presentation outlines
the recent reforms of the social security system in China, and
assesses its effectiveness. Here, social security reforms focus
on the changes of the retirement and unemployment insurance schemes
and the social assistance program.
Individual
Accounts in Social Security: Can They Be Progressive?
Michael Sherraden
Director,
Center for Social Development
Washington
University
This paper
examines implications of proposed individual accounts within the
U.S. social security system, noting that most proposals, including
what we have heard of President Bush’s, are hugely regressive
and undesirable. If there are to be individual accounts, either
within the social security system or outside of it, the main issue
will be inclusion of the whole population and adequacy of asset
accumulations. The author presents policy alternatives that are
more progressive.
The Changing
World of Social Security
Dalmer Hoskins
Secretary
General
International
Social Security Association
The speaker
shares his reflections and thoughts about the possibilities and
pitfalls of providing a social welfare net in the new decade.
Welfare
and the Unemployment Crisis: Sweden in the 1990s
Joakim Palme
Stockholm
University
The speaker
presents statistics illustrating the crisis of unemployment in
Sweden in the 1990s.
Privatization:
Lessons from the Chilean Experience
Silvia Borzutzky
Carnegie Mellon
University
Chile was
the first country to fully privatize its social security system.
The speaker analyzes the privatization and outlines the lessons
that US policymakers can learn from the Chilean experience.
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