Social Protection Goals in East Asia

Mukul G. Asher is Professorial Fellow, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He specialises in social security and public financial management issues in Asia. He has published widely in national and international journals, and authored or edited more than fifteen books. He is on the Editorial Board of several journals, including the Journal of the Economics of Ageing and Poverty & Public Policy. He has been a consultant to multilateral organisations such as the IMF, The World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the World Health Organization. He has led Executive Training Programs for officials of several countries, including Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Kazakhstan. He served as Chairman of the 5th State Finance Commission of Haryana State in India from May 2016 to September 2017.Fauziah Zen is Senior Economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). She is also a faculty member at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia, and a visiting professor at Hitotsubashi University, Japan. She has been working with the governments of East Asia in the fields of public finance, infrastructure and connectivity, disaster management, and social protection.Astrid Dita is an independent researcher working on issues related to public finance, fiscal decentralisation, infrastructure, and social protection in Indonesia. She is consultant to various international organisations such as Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and AusAID. She obtained her Masters in Economics from University of Indonesia.

'Enhancing social protection is a high policy priority for governments throughout East Asia, yet there is considerable confusion on how best to achieve this objective. The book provides both a rigorous conceptual framework and pragmatic, country-specific applications of this framework that should be extremely useful in helping to meet these daunting social protection challenges. Not only will the book help countries to assess progress in their efforts to broaden and deepen social protection, but equally important, it will help them to generate the requisite fiscal space to fund their social protection initiatives. The book is a must read for anyone engaged in the design, implementation, or evaluation of social protection programs in East Asia.' — Jay K. Rosengard, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

• 1. Approaches and Fiscal Space Generation for Social Protection Goals: An Overview (Mukul Asher, Fauziah Zen, and Astrid Dita) 2. Review of Approaches to Assess the Sustainability of Social Protection Floors (Krzysztof Hagemejer) 3. Social Protection Programs in China: Assessments and Prospects (Jin Feng) 4. Social Protection System in India: An Analysis of the Recent Initiatives (Mukul Asher and Yutika Vora) 5. The Case of Social Protection Floor in Indonesia (Fauziah Zen and Astrid Dita) 6. Social Protection Floor: A Perspective from the Developing East Asia: Thailand (Srawooth Paitoonpong, Phacharawadee Tasee, and Pimrumpa Waisuriya) 7. Social Protection Floor: Philippines (Aniceto C. Orbeta, Jr.) 8. An Analysis of Social Protection Floor (SPF) Arrangements in Vietnam (Nguyen Thi Lan Huong)