Foreword

Society at a Glance: Asia/Pacific, the OECD’s overview of social indicators for the region, presents evidence on social trends across countries in Asia and the Pacific.

Chapter 1 introduces this volume and provides readers with a guide to help them interpret OECD social indicators. The remainder of the publication presents the indicators in a standardised format: one page of figures and accompanying text, pointing the reader to sources and potential caveats with measurement issues. The indicators are grouped in five chapters: general context, self-sufficiency, equity, health and social cohesion. Each chapter holds five indicators, but the health section includes an additional indicator to illustrate recent trends in cases and deaths related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A previous draft of this report was discussed at the annual meeting of social policy experts organised by the OECD/Korea policy centre virtually on 16 December 2021. The draft benefitted from comments by the different experts including: Ashish Kumar Aggarwal (India); Shaikh Shamsuddin Ahmed (Bangladesh); Florence Bonnet (ILO); Solongo Algaa (Mongolia); Hyeon-kyeong Kim and Su-jin Kim (Korea); Norma Binti Mansor (Malaysia); Yang Lixiong (China); Theany Choeurng (Cambodia); Junko Takezawa (Japan); Michiel Van Der Auwera (ADB); Peter Whiteford (Australian National University); Turro Wongkaren (Indonesia); and, Suk-myung Yun (Korea).

This report was prepared by Willem Adema, Pauline Fron and Yukiko Takei, while EunKyung Shin contributed to a previous draft. The contribution of data on Social Expenditure by Michiel Van Der Auwera (ADB) is gratefully acknowledged. Maxime Ladaique (Fertility) and Philippe Herve and Cécile Thoreau (International Migration) contributed to Chapter 2; Jonas Fluchtmann provided data on labour force participation for Chapter 3, Andrew Reilly provided data on pensions for Chapter 4, while Luca Lorenzoni and Michele Cecchini provided data and comments on Chapter 5. This report was prepared in the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS) under the leadership of Stefano Scarpetta (Director of ELS), Mark Pearson (Deputy Director of ELS), and Monika Queisser (Senior Counsellor and Head of Social Policy). The many colleagues who provided assistance include Liv Gudmundson, Lucy Hulett and Natalie Corry.

The online version of this publication, including all figures and data, can be accessed at http://oe.cd/sag-asia.

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