Introduction

There has long been debate about whether East Asia has a welfare model distinct from Western or Anglo-Saxon welfare states (see for example Goodman et al, 1998; Walker and Wong, 2005; Takegawa and Lee, 2006). While welfare provision shapes societies in particular ways, it is also often shaped by existing power structures and cultural norms. The balance of state, family and market responsibilities differ in each society, however, and small states and the significant role played by families are often highlighted as the characteristics of the East Asian model. We can then ask whether the East Asian economic miracle was at the sacrifice of welfare policy, while families bore a heavy burden of welfare provision.

Despite a variation in their size, political structures and economic developments, East Asian societies share cultural norms. This chapter highlights particular East Asian practices of family support by examining types, flows and volumes of support provided or exchanged between and over generations. It also investigates how the nature and patterns of such support exchanges have shifted as a result of more recent demographic changes, economic reforms and shifting cultural norms within and across societies. The housing dimension is used in particular to examine changing family reciprocity in contemporary East Asia. For example, there has been a shift away from co-residency and it was this living arrangement that traditionally made sharing other resources easier among family households.

The analysis of the empirical data for this chapter is focused on a comparison of two major cities in East Asia – Tokyo, Japan, and Shanghai, the People's Republic of China. In many ways these cities do not represent (the structure and composition of) their own society. Rather, they are at the forefront of socioeconomic change and such dynamism makes the cases more interesting to analyse. Being the largest and perhaps most developed cities in their own countries, these cities are likely to capture the accentuated processes of social change including shifting intergenerational relations within families. The case studies present the strategies and practices of family relations that are changing to cope with wider structural shifts taking place in these societies. Comparing these two cities (and thus the two societies) will illustrate striking differences as well as similarities.