Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T05:24:45.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reconsidering the Housing Asset-Based Welfare Approach: Reflection from East Asian Experiences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2015

Misa Izuhara
Misa Izuhara*
Affiliation:
Centre for Urban and Public Policy Research, University of Bristol E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Housing is a platform of wealth accumulation in many home-owning societies. Ownership of assets often contributes to help people build social capital, influence their social participation and helps them access increasingly privatised goods and services. Such ‘asset-based welfare’ has been fashionable in Western academic circles, considering the ways in which housing could become a real or potential welfare resource. It may not, however, be such a novel idea from an East Asian perspective since the promotion of home ownership has always been embedded in the wider context of welfare provision in many parts of the region. Despite the argument that an increasing level of home ownership could potentially compensate for the erosion of family support, the sustainability of a home-ownership-based welfare approach has been questioned. At the forefront of ‘post-growth’ societies with societal ageing, recession, housing price volatility and neoliberal policy reforms, using Japan as a case study, this article examines the reasons and conditions behind the lack of success in commonly identified strategies of asset-based welfare in a regional context. The policy-driven market failures which supersede the cultural obstacles require re-examination.

Keywords

Asset-based welfarehome ownershipequity releasesocial inequalitiesEast AsiaJapan
Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 177 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arakawa, E. (2003) ‘Koureisha shisan no ryudo-ka [Liquidising assets among older people]’, Life Design Report, 2000, 9, 4–15.Google Scholar
Asami, S. (ed.) (2014) Toshi no Kūkanchi Akiya wo Kangaeru [Consider urban vacant land and housing], Tokyo: Progres.Google Scholar
Chua, B. H. (2003) ‘Maintaining housing values under the condition of universal homeownership’, Housing Studies, 18, 3, 765–80.Google Scholar
Chua, B. H. (2014) ‘Navigating between limits: the future of public housing in Singapore’, Housing Studies, 29, 4, 520–33.Google Scholar
Chou, K. L., Chow, N. W. S. and Chi, I. (2006) ‘Willingness to consider applying for reverse mortgage in Hong Kong Chinese middle-aged homeowners’, Habitat International, 30, 3, 716–27.Google Scholar
Doling, J. and Ford, J. (2007) ‘A union of home owners, editorial’, European Journal of Housing and Planning, 7, 2, 113–27.Google Scholar
Doling, J. and Ronald, R. (2010) ‘Home ownership and asset-based welfare’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 25, 2, 165–73.Google Scholar
Doling, J. and Ronald, R. (2012) ‘Meeting the income needs of older people in East Asia: using housing equity’, Ageing and Society, 32, 3, 471–90.Google Scholar
Dupuis, A. and Thorns, D. C. (1998) ‘Home, home ownership and the search for ontological security’, The Sociological Review, 46, 1, 24–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forrest, R. and Hirayama, Y. (2009) ‘The uneven impact of neoliberalism on housing opportunities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33, 4, 998–1013.Google Scholar
Forrest, R. and Hirayama, Y. (2014) ‘The financialisation of the social project: embedded liberalism, neoliberalism and home ownership’, Urban Studies, 52, 2, 233–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forrest, R. and Izuhara, M. (2012) ‘The shaping of housing histories in Shanghai’, Housing Studies, 27, 1, 27–44.Google Scholar
Forrest, R. and Lee, J. (eds.) (2004) Housing and Social Change: East–West Perspectives, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identify: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Groves, R., Murie, A. and Watson, C. (eds.) (2007) Housing and the New Welfare State: Perspectives from East Asia and Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Hirayama, Y. (2003) ‘Housing and social inequalities in Japan’, in Izuhara, M. (ed.), Comparing Social Policies: Exploring New Perspectives in Britain and Japan, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 151–71.Google Scholar
Hirayama, Y. (2010a) ‘The role of home ownership in Japan's aged society’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 25, 2, 175–91.Google Scholar
Hirayama, Y. (2010b) ‘Housing pathway divergence in Japan's insecure economy’, Housing Studies, 25, 6, 777–97.Google Scholar
Horioka, C. Y. (2014) ‘Are Americans and Indians more altruistic than the Japanese and Chinese? Evidence from a new international survey of bequest plans’, The Review of Economics of the Households, 12, 3, 411–37.Google Scholar
Izuhara, M. (2007) ‘Turning stock into cash flow: strategies using housing assets in an ageing society’, in Hirayama, Y. and Ronald, R. (eds.), Housing and Social Transitions in Japan, London: Routledge, pp. 94–113.Google Scholar
Izuhara, M. (2009) Housing, Care and Inheritance, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Izuhara, M. (2013) ‘Life-course diversity, housing choices and constraints for women of the “lost” generation in Japan’, Housing Studies, DOI 10.1080/02673037.2014.933780.Google Scholar
Lee, J. (2009) ‘Developmentalism, social welfare and state capacity in East Asia: integrating housing and social security in Singapore’, Journal of Asian Public Policy, 2, 2, 157–70.Google Scholar
Logan, J. R., Fang, Y. and Zhang, Z. (2010) ‘The winners in China's urban housing reform’, Housing Studies, 25, 1, 101–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lowe, S. G., Searle, B. A. and Smith, S. J. (2011) ‘From housing wealth to mortgage debt: the emergence of Britain's asset-based welfare state’, Social Policy and Society, 11, 1, 105–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masuda, H. (2014) Chihou Shometsu [Disappearing regions], Tokyo: ChukouShinsho.Google Scholar
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (2014) Housing and Land Survey, Tokyo: Statistics Bureau.Google Scholar
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (2014) Kenchiku Chakko Toukei Chousa [Construction Survey], Tokyo: Statistics Bureau.Google Scholar
Moser, C. O. N. (ed.) (2007) Reducing Global Poverty: The Case for Asset Accumulation, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Okuda, K. (1999) ‘Nihon ni okeru reverse mortgage no genjo [Reverse mortgage schemes in Japan]’, Yusei Kenkyusho Geppo, 9, 109–14.Google Scholar
Phang, S. Y. (2007) ‘The Singapore model of housing and the welfare state’, in Grove, R., Murie, A. and Watson, C. (eds.), Housing and the New Welfare State: Examples from East Asia and Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 15–44.Google Scholar
Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quilgars, D. and Jones, A. (2007) ‘United Kingdom: as safe as houses?’, in Elsinga, M., De Decker, P., Teller, T. and Toussaint, J. (eds.), Beyond Asset and Insecurity: On (In)Security of Home Ownership in Europe, Amsterdam: IOS Press, pp. 259–86.Google Scholar
Regan, S. and Paxton, W. (2001) Asset-Based Welfare: International Experiences, London: IPPR.Google Scholar
Ronald, R. (2008) The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing, Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Ronald, R. and Doling, J. (2012) ‘Testing home ownership as the cornerstone of welfare: lessons from East Asia for the West’, Housing Studies, 27, 7, 940–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowlingson, K. (2006) ‘“Living poor to die rich?” or “spending the kids inheritance?” Attitudes to assets and inheritance in later life’, Journal of Social Policy, 35, 2, 175–92.Google Scholar
Shanghai Statistics Bureau (2010) Shanghai Statistical Yearbook 2010, Beijing: China Statistics Press.Google Scholar
Sherraden, M. (1991) Assets and the Poor: A New American Welfare Policy, New York: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Sherraden, M. (1997) ‘Provident funds and social protection: the case of Singapore’, in Sherraden, M. and Midgley, J. (eds.), Alternatives to Social Security: An International Inquiry, Westport, CT: Greenwood, pp. 33–60.Google Scholar
Spilerman, S. (2000) ‘Wealth and stratification processes’, Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 497–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tachibanaki, T. (2006) Kakusa Shakai: nani ga mondai nanoka [Gap Society], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Google Scholar
Tang, W. and Parish, W. (2000) Chinese Urban Life under Reform: The Changing Social Contract, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Torgersen, U. (1987) ‘Housing: the wobbly pillar under the welfare state’, Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research, 4, 1, 116–26.Google Scholar
Toussaint, J. and Elsinga, M. (2009) ‘Exploring “housing asset-based welfare”: can the UK be held up as an example for Europe?’, Housing Studies, 24, 5, 669–92.Google Scholar
Wang, Y. P. and Murie, A. (2000) ‘Social and spatial implication of housing reform in China’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24, 2, 397–417.Google Scholar
Watson, M. (2009) ‘Planning for a future of asset-based welfare? New Labour, financialized economic agency and the housing market’, Planning, Practice and Research, 24, 1, 41–56.Google Scholar