Social assistance in nine OECD countries

As a form of social security, means-tested social assistance has acquired an increasing importance in the comparative literature on welfare states. Although there is a growing number of international and comparative studies of East Asian social policy, relatively little attention has been paid to social assistance schemes in this region. This paper makes an effort to step into some of the gaps. It compares social assistance in Korea with that in Japan and seven European countries in terms of expenditure and claimant numbers, conditions of eligibility and entitlement, and benefit levels. This forms the basis to locate Korea within social assistance regime theory. Compared with other countries, the Korean assistance scheme can be characterised by a rather marginal, national, general model with strict eligibility and entitlement rules and relatively low benefit levels. The study also found that the Korean scheme contains elements of British, Portuguese and Japanese models. Introduction Interest in targeting, selectivity and means-testing continues to grow in international context. In many OECD countries, there was steady increase in both the volume of social assistance expenditure and the recipient numbers, driven by rising levels of unemployment and social and family changes up to 2000 (Behrendt, 2002; Eardley et al., 1996; Ditch and Oldfield, 1999, Gough et al., 1997). Targeted means-tested social assistance schemes are widely recommended by the World Bank and the other international agencies for Eastern European countries and other developing world as an essential social