Welfare Reform on the Web (July 2007): Social housing - overseas

Housing and the new welfare state: perspectives from East Asia and Europe

R. Groves, A. Murie, C. Watson (editors)

Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007

The book considers the changing nature and significance of housing provision within welfare states. With housing playing an increasingly important role in welfare provision, the new welfare state emerging in different parts of the world is being developed in the context of individual asset accumulation and the private ownership of housing. The book shows that housing is becoming critical to asset-based welfare not only in Western Europe but also in the six East Asian housing systems that are a major focus of the book. Individual chapters provide analysis of housing policies in Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan. Also examined are the 'four worlds' of welfare and housing; the causes and consequences of the shift from tenants to home owners in the old welfare states of Britain and other parts of Western Europe; and the growth of the property-owning welfare state as a theme running through contemporary policy in both East Asia and Europe.