International Comparative Study of Social Insurance Reforms and Rethinking of the Basic Principles

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The social and economic environment where original and traditional social insurance schemes in the European countries were instituted has changed a great deal in the past few decades due to factors such as change of demographic structure, variation of labor market, diversity of marriage, family and life styles.In order to cope with those changes, social insurance systems have been reformed, especially among the developed welfare states in Western Europe. For example, the discrimination between part time workers and full time workers in social insurance legislation has been eliminated and the sex discrimination in the social insurance entitlement has been prohibited in the EU as well. Furthermore, the financing of social insurance has been partly funded by various taxes even among the Bismarck model states such as Germany and France.These reforms have brought about the revision of the traditional tool concepts contained in social insurance legislation, such as the concept of the employee, the self-employed, the family dependent and the employer-employee contribution system.On the other hand, some European states have pushed on with Welfare to Work policy under the fundamental idea of the Third Way, which has some relationship with social insurance reforms.In this research, it has been made clear that 1) what parts of traditional tool concepts have been revised, 2) what policy framework should be recognized in the trinity concept (opportunity, responsibility and community) that composes the fundamental idea of the Third Way, and 3) what relationship between social insurance reforms and the Third Way policy framework in the European welfare states may exist.