Introduction, Comparison And Analysis On Maternity Insurance System In European And Asian Countries

Maternity insurance is an important program of the national social insurance system, which is provided by the country and the society for the women workers when they lose their labor ability and normal wage or salary income because of the pregnancy and bearing. The government establishes the related maternity insurance system policies, law or regulations, and different specific measurements to provide the basic life security for the women workers during their pregnancy and bearing the new-born child. In general, the maternity insurance system issued by the government will include the following items: the coverage of insured person, qualifying conditions, maternity benefits, sources of maternity funds and so on. On the basis of the consideration of the following factors, the writer puts her attention to study the maternity insurance system in European and Asian representative countries. It also could be seen the reasons why the writer chose this theme as the post-graduation paper for her Social Security Master Degree. 1. Maternity insurance can effect the social development greatly. It is of importance to study the maternity insurance system itself. In the whole social security system, as concerning the fund scale, maternity insurance is only a "small" program; as concerning the pay period, it's only a "short" program; but as concerning the insurance aim, it's a "significant" program. It's necessary to establish and implement maternity insurance for it is helpful to protect the women workers' basic rights, helpful to improve the population diathesis, helpful to implement the national population policy and helpful to enterprise equal competition and create the fair job opportunity for women. With the development of social and economy, the governments in the world pay more and more attention to maternity insurance system. 2. After 50 years' development of our country's maternity insurance system, it needs to be reformed to adapt to the current social and economy and enterprise environment. During the reform process, we not only need to accumulate our country's good practices, but also need to try to know and research the current experiences and the development trends of foreign countries on maternity insurance system. 3. In this paper, the writer focuses on introducing European and Asian countries' maternity insurance system and does some comparison and analysis. Europe is the original place of the world's social security. The maternity insurance also originated from these industrial countries with long history. On some extent, comparing with other countries or districts, their current system is perfect. So it is good for us to use for reference. The reason choosing some Asian countries to introduce is that the writer thought about the similarity on geography, politics, economy and population policies between China and these Asian countries. 4. As far as the innovation concerned, this paper has the functions to reinforce, renovate and deepen the research on the field of the maternity insurance in domestic. During the process of collecting the relative resources and materials, the writer found that in China National Library, there has been no any Master or PhD paper which had been done on the theme of maternity insurance. Most reference books on the subject of maternity insurance in domestic put their emphasis on introducing basic knowledge, propagandizing the national laws, regulations and policies on national maternity insurance itself. As to the international information on maternity, the contents in many books only related to some ILO Maternity Standards or Conventions. There were only several books which come down to the foreign countries' maternity insurance system arrangements. But it has been 10-20 years far from now. The data and information in it needed to be updated urgently. When introducing the maternity insurance system in 15 European countries and 10 Asian countries which were chosen, this paper used a lot of updated foreign materials and resources as reference. The main data an...