Abstract
One of the characteristics of East Asian welfare provision is to make use of family as a major
service provider of care. However, as seen in other developed nations, fonnation of nuclear family,
women' s entry into labor market, residual service provision from government made it difficult for
family to supply care accordingly to the increasing care needs. Another common aspect of those regions
is that government promotes family to maintain responsible for the care service provider through tax
reduction, legalization of maintenance of elderly parents, moral education and issuance of employment
permit of foreign domestic worker. This can be called familialization policy, which made use of
traditional nonns and values. Even with difference of welfare policy in those regions, one feature in
common is the high dependency ratio of migrants working as domestic helper. Familializaton policy
is typically practiced in Singapore whose government declared not to follow welfare states to keep
international economic competitiveness. When compared to other nations, East Asian region is of quite
conspicuous in that they accept foreign workers as domestic workers in order to keep family function as
care provider. This means that domestic workers help maintain traditional function as care provider that
contradicts nowadays due to structural change of family and high ratio of women in the labor market.
However, familialization policy has some drawbacks. First, not all can secure care from domestic worker
due to hislher economic employability. This is the drawback of market transaction. Secondly, family as a
unit of care provider can work when a person fonns a family. In other words, single persons theoretically
cannot dependent on family care because he/she does not fonn a family.
