Foreword (April 2025, Health and Welfare Policy Forum)

Abstract

In this April issue of the Health and Welfare Forum, we explore the theme of “The Social Risks Engendered by Changes in Technology, Population, and Climate.” Welfare states have grown since the last century, protecting their citizens from traditional social risks, such as in unemployment, old age, industrial accident, and ill-health, as well as from new social risks concerning, among other things, care needs and working poverty. Now, a quarter into the 21st century, humanity finds itself confronting three megatrends: technological advancement, demographic shifts, and climate change. For now, it is hard to get the measure of what their impact might be on society. However, as has been suggested as a possibility, they may work in combination to mitigate, alter, or intensify existing social risks while concurrently giving rise to unprecedented, so-called “third-generation” social risks. By social risks, we mean, going by the definition given by van Kersbergen and Vis in Comparative Welfare State Politics (2014), “probability of a welfare loss associated with one’s position in society and the life cycle.” In this April issue, our contributors examine how these three megatrends, acting singly, in interaction, or through the mediating effect of one on another, may engender third-generation social risks and what forms these risks might take. Admittedly, the scope of the quest on hand is too broad for our discussion to be as precise in detail as, say, studies focusing on specific challenges. That notwithstanding, we have put together the present issue in the hope of coming to grips with the transformations characteristic of our times—their direction, pace, and impact. The comparison may be likened to that between a large-scale landscape and a miniature still life. I hope that readers will find in this issue a field sketch that can serve as a reference in shaping long-term plans and visions for the Korean welfare state.