A Study on Welfare Service Needs and Related Factors in Wonju City

원주시 성인남녀의 지역복지서비스 필요도 및 관련요인

The purpose of this study is to investigate factors that explain the degree of need for community welfare services designed for the residents of Wonju City. For this purpose, we identify five categories of community welfare services : employment no income supporting programs, residence supporting programs, public health programs, family programs and welfare facilities for enhancing quality of life. The data come from 234 adults living in Wonju city, Major findings can be summarized as follows. Firstly, we find that participants are well aware of needs for community welfare service, and that the degree of need for public health services is the highest among the five types of welfare programs. Secondly, we find differential effects of the individual factors such as predisposing, enabling, and need, and the community factors such as quality of environmental facilities which make daily lives convenient, and residential region. Particularly, environmental facilities appear to have a strong association with high needs for the majority of welfare services. Finally, differences between urban and rural areas are still observed. These results suggest that the responsibility of Wonju city for providing diverse and adequate welfare services should be emphasized. Priorities for welfare policies based on the empirical data are also taken into consideration in the process of developing community welfare policies.