The Welfare Mix Structure in Korea: an Expenditure Study of 2000

한국 복지혼합의 구조: 2000년도 지출추계를 중심으로

The purpose of this article is to analyse the expenditure structure of the welfare mix; in order to grasp the holistic feature of the Korean social welfare. Most of all, the article attempts to elaborate the estimation methods of social welfare expenditure by including the components from which has been excluded so far - indirect tax expenditure of the government, nursery payments of households, life insurance pay-outs for survivors, inter-household private income transfers and the value of caring work of the family. In so doing, the article estimates that the total social welfare expenditure including state, enterprise, market, NPOs and family reached at 24.7% of GDP in 2000, which is approximately 2.5 times more than public social welfare expenditure. It implies that non-state, private sectors dominates the structure of social welfare provisions in Korea. In addition, based on the analyses of the expenditure structure, the article defines the main feature of Korea's welfare mix as the 'mixed structure of the welfare mix dominated by the protective family', or 'expanded public sector, relatively limited market, and protective family'. Such a family-dominated welfare mix structure in Korea indicates that the fundamental source of solidarity of the Korean social welfare system is family and, therefore, the welfare regime of Korea can be classified as 'Conservative'.