Welfare Budget and Legislation in Taiwan Since the 1990s, more than half of the working population enters the service sector. Taiwan then becomes the post- industrial country. The social welfare legislation is more comprehensive and the welfare budget grows even more rapidly With political democratization, Taiwan changed the ruling party for the first time in 2000. This certainly brought in some stimulation concerning welfare legislation and spending, because the new ruling party has different ideology in the social policy. And this takes Taiwan into different phase particularly in social welfare.
With regard to social welfare legislation, the KMT paid more attention the establishment of the system, particularly in social insurance schemes, such as the national health insurance and the labor insurance. Based on Esping-Andersen's point of view, the K welfare ideology is similar to the liberal welfare regime. It is center to right in the spectrum of ideology, and gives more attention to developing national economy.
As shown in Table 4, during 2000 and 2007, implemented by the DDP government and influenced by the center-left welfare ideology, the welfare budget and proportion of such budget in central government's total budget are higher than the budget when the KMT was in power And most of the social welfare budget is mainly for the old population, especially old age allowance for the elderly which accounts for almost 90% of social welfare budget. This is very different from the past when the KMT was ruling