Journal of Asian Public Policy

Social Change, Wellbeing, and Social Policy in East Asia: Insights and Innovations

East Asia is experiencing one of the most rapid and consequential demographic and social transformations in the world. Ultra-low fertility, rising life expectancy, and accelerated ageing are reshaping labour markets, intergenerational relationships, and the fiscal foundations of welfare states. Recent scholarship emphasizes that the demographic transition in East Asia is not merely a late version of western ageing, but it is produced through distinctive cultural legacies, family norms, and political-institutional trajectories. These dynamics are now converging with other deep global changes such as urbanization, digitalization, cross-border mobility, and widening inequalities.

Public policy in the region is therefore facing a dual challenge. First, governments must respond to the material pressures of ageing societies including, care demand, pension sustainability, health system expansion, and workforce shrinkage. Second, they must do so while maintaining (or improving) wellbeing in contexts where traditional family care buffers are weakening. Studies of East Asian ageing underline the importance of family-based welfare and social networks but also warn that reliance on family care is increasingly precarious as household size shrinks and women’s labour force participation rises. Comparative evidence points to growing “care poverty” and unmet long-term care needs, with measurable impacts on mental health and life satisfaction among older adults.

In response, East Asian policy systems are experimenting with major reforms and innovations. These include long-term care insurance expansions (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, pilot cities in China), delayed-retirement or pension recalibration, technology-assisted care and community support models, and new pronatalist or family-support measures responding to fertility decline. The policy frontier is increasingly shaped by digital tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, robotics, and smart-city infrastructures, seen by several governments as essential to sustaining care and welfare systems under demographic strain.

This Special Issue provides a timely opportunity to consolidate insights from these transformations, introduce comparative perspectives, and highlight forward-looking policy pathways across East Asia.

Objectives of the Special Issue

Building on the symposium, the Special Issue aims to:

1. Advance understanding of social change and wellbeing in East Asia: The special will foreground new empirical and theoretical research on how demographic, economic, cultural, and technological transformation affects wellbeing outcomes across the life course.
2. Assess social policy adaptation of social change and wellbeing in East Asia: Contributions will examine welfare state recalibration, long-term care development, health policy, and family/market/community reconfiguration in ageing contexts.
3. Highlight policy innovations and governance experiments: It will emphasize emerging models such as digital/AI-enabled care, community-based interventions, transnational support systems, and institutional designs that improve wellbeing.
4. Foster interdisciplinary and cross-territory dialogue: The issue invites work from social and public policy, sociology, social work, gerontology, public health, and data/AI policy studies, reflecting the symposium’s breadth.

Scope and Thematic Coverage

We invite conceptually rigorous and policy-relevant papers (qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and comparative studies) on topics including but not limited to:

1. Ageing, Social Care Regimes, and Long-term Care Policy

• Long-term care insurance design and implementation
• Unmet care needs, care poverty, and wellbeing outcomes
• Family care, community care, and marketization trajectories

2. Wellbeing across the Life Course Under Social Change.

• Maternal and perinatal mental health linked to later-life wellbeing
• Social capital and community environments for healthy ageing
• Loneliness, depression, and subjective wellbeing in urbanizing societies

3. Technology, AI, and Welfare Innovation.

• AI-assisted care, predictive social services, and digital inclusion
• Governance, ethics, and inequality effects of welfare technology
• Smart ageing policy and robotic/assistive care ecosystems

4. Social & Public Policy, Institutional, and Political Reforms.

• How political institutions shape reform capacity and timing
• Welfare retrenchment, delayed retirement, and fiscal sustainability
• Intergovernmental and local experimentation (e.g., China’s pilot cities)

5. Migration, Transnational Families, and Cross-border Care.

• Older migrants’ healthcare and transnational support practices
• Welfare portability and diaspora ageing
• Policy implications of cross-border long-term care

6. Inequality, Gender, and Intergenerational Tensions.

• Gendered burdens of ageing and care work
• Intergenerational equity in pensions and welfare allocations
• Socioeconomic stratification of wellbeing in ageing societies

Target Audience

This Special Issue targets researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the fields of public and social policy, social work, sociology, and health sciences. It aims to inform and inspire those involved in developing effective social policies that address the evolving needs of East Asian societies.