The Buried Welfare Years

Taiwan's Labour Insurance fund will run out by 2028. This is not just a financial black hole — it is a rupture in the country's intergenerational contract. Can the promises of one generation still be honoured by the labour of the next?

For three decades, Taiwan's pension debate has been trapped in a "fiscal vs. welfare" binary. That framing can no longer answer the multiple pressures the system now faces: demographic change, labour-market flexibilisation, new payout risks for women and non-standard workers, and the new governance problems that arise once pension assets are channelled into financial markets.

This volume gathers researchers across social policy, social work, economics and political science to revisit Taiwan's pension predicament along four axes: generational justice, gender equality, labour-market change, and pension financialisation. Drawing on two decades of European and Japanese reform experience, it sketches workable Taiwanese solutions.