2018 Volume 2018 Issue 191 Pages 191_95-191_110
It goes without saying that Britain referred to the Beveridge Report as the blueprint for its welfare state after World War II. The report, published in 1942, proposed establishing a comprehensive social insurance system based on contributions from labour, management and the government that encompassed all employees, safeguarding them from every possible risk related to the loss of income. The British people, in the midst of war, were said to have embraced this system enthusiastically.
The influence of the Beveridge Report was not limited to Britain itself. It propagated to Britain’s colonies through various systems and entities such as the Colonial Office, Labour Departments, trades unions in Britain and its colonies and the Labour Advisory Boards, triggering much debate. This paper focuses on the process that took place to create a social security system in East Asia through the perspective of the empire’s history, shedding light on one part of the global history of the welfare state.
In particular, this paper outlines the process that took place to create the Employees’ Provident Fund and the Central Provident Fund, both of which play a central role in Malaysia and Singapore to this day. Similar systems were subsequently established one after another in British colonies such as India, Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda.
The basic characteristics of the provident funds are those of compulsory savings systems that set aside contributions from labour and management in employees’ individual accounts. Despite that, the risk is not pooled among users and there are no contributions from the state. The provident funds also made it possible to carry out economic development projects by funding government bonds of huge value, firmly underpinning developmentalism from a financial perspective. It is as if both systems were formed and evolved with no relation to Europe’s idea of a welfare state. In fact, much research has been conducted on the distinctive and unusual nature of the East Asian welfare model compared to the European-style welfare state.
However, these systems would not have been formed without Britain’s idea of a welfare state and the country’s involvement. How was the social security system in East Asia, often portrayed in stark contrast to European-style welfare states and even labelled as “backward”, formed? Furthermore, how did the system evolve over time? This paper will explore the possibilities of the welfare state’s global history.
