邁向老人福利國？臺灣社會安全支出結構的分析

Towards an Elderly Welfare State? -An Analysis of the Structure of Social Expenditure in Taiwan

1970年代石油危機導致西方國家經濟衰退、財政緊縮，引發福利國家面臨改革的壓力；再加上西方國家進入後工業化，產生就業不穩定、長期失業、工作貧窮、單親家庭增加等新社會經濟風險。這些情況導致學界一方面透過社會支出的長期發展，回答西方工業民主福利國家是否出現緊縮，另一方面也使得社會支出結構轉變與影響因素探討的分析，成為2000年代以來量化福利國家研究的顯學。反觀1990年代臺灣歷經民主轉型與深化，導致福利體系的擴張，進而促使社會支出迅速增加。不過，隨時間演進，我國亦身處經濟全球化侵蝕及後工業化社會所衍生的各種新風險。因此，本文關注在臺灣社會支出結構組成的樣貌，試圖解析政府福利建構的偏好。為了能與OECD國家社會支出發展形貌進行比對，筆者採主計處依循ILO社會安全支出的定義及OECD SOCX的架構編制而成的2000-2009年「社會安全支出統計資料庫」。研究結果發現，臺灣社會支出維持穩定增長的趨勢；其次，在類似的經濟發展水準下，我國社會支出比重與OECD國家間有著高達10%的差距，人均社會支出僅占OECD國家的五成；且相較於OECD國家，我國在老人以外之新社會風險相關政策建構明顯不足，而在高齡支出結構的分析中更突顯出不同方案間的資源分配不均現象。

During 1970s, the outbreak of Energy Crisis had led to economic recession and financial retrenchment in the Western Countries. Besides, in association with the process of post industrialization, welfare states were under great pressures of reformations. To disclose if these Western welfare states were encountering with tight retrenchment, therefore, heated debates about the long-term development and structural change of social expenditure, as well as the influential factors, have been witnessed in the quantitative studies of welfare states since the beginning of the 21st centuries. With its high consistency of division structure, these studies are also found widely using the Social Expenditure database(SOCX) created by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) for international comparative research. While in the case of Taiwan, after the democratization in late 1980s, Taiwanese government had adopted welfare expansion strategies and had led to the rapid increase in social expenditure. However, as time goes by, the society has found under the threats of globalization and deindustrialization which gradual emergence of precarious groups are discovered. Hence, to examine the preference and characteristic of Taiwanese government on welfare state development, this study is trying to approach the question by analyzing the structure of social expenditure in Taiwan. The Social Expenditure database that created by Executive Yuan following the standard of ILO and OECD SOCX is used in this study for having social dialogue with the OECD countries. It is discovered that despite the increasing trend of total social expenditure, Taiwan is about 10% lower than the average of OECD countries and social expenditure per capita is merely about 50% of the OECD’s average, given the relative similarity in the standard of economic development. Furthermore, social spending for the least advantage groups, other than the elderly, is obviously insufficient in compare to OECD countries. Also, by analyzing the social spending on the elderly programmes, it is revealed that there is inequality in financial distribution.