Author Description

Authors Low (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore) and Aw (medicine, National U. of Singapore) believe that Singapore's self-financed Central Provident Fund (CPF) "based on work effort rather than entitlement was laudable in contrast to Western welfarism of pay-as-you-go social insurance," but has become inadequate for social protection. After explaining the origins and evolution of the CPF since the 1950s, they provide advice on how to address this problem by examining the domestic and external drivers of the current state of the CPF. They then consider the relative merits of incremental and drastic overhauls of the CPF in the context of comparative examinations of other countries' welfare models. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)