A Study on Local Variations of Elderly Welfare Facilities by Care Type

노인복지시설 유형별 지역적 편차에 관한 연구

This study purposed to examine elderly welfare facilities by type, to analyze their local variations, and ultimately to contribute to the expansion of elderly welfare infrastructure. The results are expected to help inspect elderly welfare infrastructure for providing the aged with social services before the execution of 'the insurance for elderly long term care' and establish welfare facilities by area in the future. For these purposes, we used the national data "The Current State of Elderly Welfare Facilities in 2007" produced by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. We digitized elderly welfare facilities in 163 cities and counties by type and analyzed them by area. We also examined the differences in the local distribution of representative elderly welfare facilities such as elderly welfare centers, home based facilities (home helper centers), asylums for the aged and elderly care facilities in 16 cities and provinces. Furthermore, we analyzed differences and problems in their local distribution urban areas, mixed areas of urban and rural communities, and rural areas. In addition, we studied the current state of institutionalized care and home based care, which are two major directions of current elderly welfare policies, based on the local distribution of facilities and analyzed differences in the trends according to area. According to these results, the urban had more home based care facilities than the rural. However, the rural had more institutionalized care facilities than urban. Also, each local self-governing body showed unique characteristics. Therefore, these results suggest that we need to establish elderly welfare policies based on the distribution of facility types by area.