Neil Gilbert is Distinguished Professor of Social Welfare and the Milton and Gertrude Chernin Chair in Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. His numerous publications include 15 books, 20 edited volumes and over 145 articles that have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Public Interest, Society, Commentary, The American Interest, The Atlantic and leading academic journals. Several of his books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Italian.  

The Korean Welfare State: Social Investment in an Aging Society surveys the development of the Korean welfare state through the analytic lens of the Social Investment State, under which contemporary policies have altered the essential character of the 20th century welfare states, which had provided a counterforce to capitalism. In contrast, the Social Investment State is seen as backing policies designed to advance capitalism by promoting labor force participation, the growth of human capital, individual responsibility and economic development. In examining the modern context and development of the Korean welfare state, this book is divided into three sections that focus on socio-political evolution, the core policies of the Korean welfare state, and the contemporary policy challenges of Korea’s aging society. The first section traces the socio-political evolution of the Korean welfare state over the last three decades. The second section surveys the core policies of the Korean welfare state. The third section explores several key policy challenges encountered by the Korean approach to social investment as it seeks to address the demands of social protection in a rapidly aging society. The volume concludes with a postscript that reviews the contemporary Korean discourse, which goes beyond the social investment state to the political interests in a universal basic income policy.