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Asia's traditional experiences with care provision differ considerably from those of the West given the prevalent family‐based social norms about care and policies in this region. In recent decades, Asia has experienced profound social and demographic transformations and is thus faced with significant challenges around care. However, care in Asian countries is a relatively less studied topic. There is an urgent need for a comparative study on recent policy and practice changes in care for the elderly and young children in different regions of Asia. The purpose of this special issue is to examine complicated boundary shift in care provision and financing between the state, market, community and family in East, Southeast and South Asia and to explore the implications of these changes in care policies and practices for social stratification by class and gender in Asia.

The introduction to this special issue gives an overview of the social and demographic transformations and new strains on care in Asia as a background and introduces the framework of welfare mix employed in this special issue, especially the concepts of social care and the welfare/care diamond.

The introduction summarizes the variations in regard to the governance and provision of care between different Asian countries and compares the differences in the state involvement between Asia and Europe.

The authors also discuss some of their contributions to methodological approaches and analytical frameworks in studying care and the implications of the current research for future studies.

The two East Asian developmental states of Japan and South Korea share very similar familialistic male breadwinner welfare regimes. However, in the recent years, both countries have made significant social policy reforms that are gradually modulating their familialistic male breadwinner welfare regimes. Both countries have extended public support for the family and women by provisioning, regulating, and coordinating childcare, elder care, and work‐family reconciliation programs. At the same time, labour market deregulation reforms have also made employment more insecure, and created greater pressures on women to seek and maintain paid work outside the home. The purpose of this paper is to compare recent social policy reforms in Japan and Korea and discuss their implications for welfare state changes and gender equality. More specifically, it asks whether this signals the end of the old developmental state paradigm and a shift to a more gender equal policy regime.

To answer this question, the paper examines recent social policy reforms in conjunction with economic and labour market policy reforms that have also been introduced since 1990.

The analysis of social and economic policy reforms in Japan and South Korea shows a combination of both progressive and instrumentalist motivations behind social care expansions in these countries. Social care reforms in both countries were responses to the evident need for more welfare and gender equality determined by the structural and ideational changes that were taking place. But they were also a remodelling of the earlier developmental state policy framework. Indeed, social care expansions were not merely timely family friendly social policies that aimed to address new social risks; they were also important complements to the employment policy reforms that were being introduced at the same time. By investing in the family, the Japanese and Korean governments sought to mobilize women's human capital, encourage higher fertility, and facilitate job creation in social welfare and care services.

This paper shows how Japanese and South Korean developmental states might be changing and remodelling themselves in the recent decades, and how new social policies are evolving in close coordination with economic and labor market policy reforms.

The purpose of this study is to examine inter‐generational arrangements in Thailand for personal care provided to older members and provided by them as grandparents to young children.

Results are based on analysis of the 2007 Survey of Older Persons in Thailand. Consideration focuses on persons aged 60 and older.

The results document the primary role of the family, especially adult children and spouses, in providing personal care to older members. For those with only one or two adult children compared to those with four or more, spouses are considerably more likely and children less likely to be the main care provider. At the same time, older family members, as grandparents, make significant contributions to the care of young children, especially for those whose parents migrated. In most such situations, however, the grandchild's parents cover the main financial support.

Trends towards smaller family size and increased migration of adult children have already contributed to a steady decline in coresidence with adult children and increased proportions of older persons living alone or only with a spouse. How this will affect elder and grandchild care requires careful monitoring to guide social policy in relation to the roles of family, state, and voluntary sector.

The availability of representative data on the older population in Thailand provides an unusual opportunity to highlight the challenges posed by the changing demographic context of inter‐generational family care in a context of rapid population ageing in a developing country setting.

The economic reforms which turned the centrally planned economy to a market economy have profoundly changed the tripartite relationship between the state, work unit, and citizen in urban China and brought significant changes to the institutional care provision for young children. The aim of this paper is to investigate the changes to the institutional care since 1980, with particular emphasis on the most recent years from mid‐1990s, and explore how the institutional care has changed over the recent decades without a clear institutional basis.

The analysis draws on second‐hand materials from published literature, a range of longitudinal national and local statistics and policy documents, and also on first‐hand information which was collected in Beijing from in‐depth interviews with key informants and case studies of different kinds of kindergartens.

The paper finds that the previous work‐unit based public care system has changed to a much more complicated care mix in which the roles of the state, employer, community, market and the informal sector of the family in terms of provision and funding have all changed significantly.

The findings of this paper may help to inform appropriate policy responses in Chinese child care provision. The study suggests that formal care provision should be expanded towards universal access regardless of people's income and employment status in China.

The paper questions and complicates the “state withdrawal” representation of social welfare change and argues that it is not “the state” but “the work unit and community organization” retreat from public care provision. It also argues that the change in the role of the state has been multifaceted, and not a simple one‐directional movement of marketization in which the state retreated from welfare provision in entirety.

This article aims to explain how a transnational “retirement industry” in Southeast Asia has emerged recently as a result of interplays between various national and transnational forces, particularly in the domain of elderly care. “Retirement industry” refers to business operations related to the relocation of foreign retirees, primarily Japanese pensioners, who seek affordable social care and alternative retirement life.

This paper is based on extensive documentary studies and multi‐sited ethnographic research from 2004 to date. In‐depth interviews with retirees and relevant agencies were carried out in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.

This article delineates how demographic and economic changes in Japan create demand for the transnational retirement industry, and how Southeast Asian countries actively promote the industry as a national development strategy. As such the boundaries between nation‐state and between the market and the state are simultaneously crossed. The industry opens new transnational routes and spaces and thus further complicates the transnationalization of elderly care in Asia.

Current research on social welfare remains dominated by methodological nationalism, and this article calls attention to the transnational dimension in understanding recent changes in social care. By engaging the predominant paradigm of “care diamond”, the article shows that how boundaries shift between various care providers within nation states is inextricably related to how borders are crossed between nation states.

This article provides an overview and analysis of care as a concept and object of policy makers' attention in Europe, mindful especially of the lessons that can be drawn from the European experience. The aim of this paper is to set out a framework to understand care and also to offer an account of the way that different European countries have provided for care (of children and older people) and how existing policies are being reformed and rethought.

The article underlines the complexity of care as a concept and domain of policy and suggests the need for a broad‐ranging approach to its analysis.

It shows that the policy configuration has to be thought of as being embedded in and in many ways a function of the primary location and forms of care, the values and culture surrounding care and the arrangements around the mix of providers and modes of governance. While there are many positive lessons from the extent to which European states have become involved in making provision for care – offering financial and other forms of support to families and those needing care and enabling women to pursue a life not completely defined by their care‐related obligations – there are also negative ones such as the outstanding need to connect up policies for care across the life spectrum (in the term used in this article: a care configuration) and to view care in a global way.

This article takes an overview of recent developments in Europe and draws out the implications of developments in Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in the context of the persistent low fertility that contributes to an ageing society, what might be the shifting roles of state and family in caring for children?

This paper aims to address this research question by drawing on the conceptual framework of “social care” (Daly and Lewis), and on data collected through a qualitative study concerning the state's population policies aimed at encouraging childbearing among citizens in Singapore.

Three themes from the interview data relate to the various dimensions of care: first, in terms of care‐as‐responsibility, interviewees consider childbearing a long‐term commitment. In this context, they perceive the current Baby Bonus scheme only as a short‐term benefit, having limited effects. Second, regarding care‐as‐costs, interviewees pointed out that some important social services are not universally affordable. In particular, they expressed a need for more state funding to put education and healthcare within the reach of the general public. Third, in terms of care‐as‐labour, care‐giving for young children by family members continues to be seen as ideal. However, there is a gap between such an ideal and the reality.

These findings suggest a greater financial and regulatory role for the state in childcare provision is increasingly vital.

As it stands, there is a mismatch of people's expectations and available policy initiatives, and this mismatch possibly undermines the success of the government's policy of encouraging childbearing.

This research complements existing studies based on content analysis of policy or statistical analysis of survey data.

The purpose of this article is to, within the specific Sri Lankan figures on ageing within South Asia (comparatively high longevity and high figures on intergenerational family‐living), look into the interpretations of social care and everyday social life in urban elder homes in Colombo. What does everyday social life look like and how are underlying meanings of care given shape? To highlight the taken for granted quality of much of everyday care, comparisons are made on the basis of earlier ethnographic research by Indian scholars on Dutch senior homes.

The methodology relied on analysis of existing quantitative data on ageing in Sri Lanka and on research generated by the four‐year team‐study of which the author was part. Specific data in this article were collected through qualitative research by the author: regular visiting and participating in activities within certain selected homes in Colombo, over a period of four months. In addition survey data were collected on 55 senior homes in Colombo.

Against a background of available statistical data on ageing; family and institutional care, qualitative research findings are provided on everyday life within the Colombo homes, Sri Lanka. What kind of care (“Araksha kerime”) is given and/or aimed for? The concept of “social care” (Daly and Lewis) is the starting point to understand how normative and social frameworks within which “care” is understood and undertaken. Cross cultural comparison with every‐day life in Dutch senior homes articulates the impact of taken for granted socio‐cultural similarities and differences embedded in the concept of “senior home” and its everyday life.

The four year research project by three main researchers (of which the author was one) resulted in a substantial data base and several publications. This specific qualitative section of research is based in an additional period of four months of regular visiting of five selected Colombo elder homes. Survey data were collected on another 55 senior homes.

The points made in the paper could be constructively discussed cross culturally and contribute to a debate on the taken for granted underlying socio‐cultural meanings within which universal definitions of – in this case – care within senior homes is pursued cross culturally. Money does not always make all the difference.

The article attempts to combine data from different disciplines and compare different socio‐cultural settings for old‐age care. This can shed a different light on the taken‐for‐granted elements in the shaping the social life in senior homes. For example, it becomes clear why the causes of loneliness and isolation among elders in a certain setting seem so “natural” within and so strange from beyond.