• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.329-352
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• 2009

This study examined life in old age and images of the aged perceived by middle-aged and old-aged generations through indepth interviews with 30 persons aged 40s through 80s residing in three areas (city or county) in capital region in Korea to use it as basic information in planning social welfare policy and reorganizing social services in response to population aging in capital region in Korea. In terms of economic life of the middle-aged and olde-aged generations perceived older people's opportunities for work were rarely given to the aged due to ageism and negative stereotypes of aging and the aged, and the aged tended to regard themselves less able or unable to work. In terms of social life of the aged both middle-aged and old-aged generations perceived that the frequency of social participation was low, and the daily life of the aged was found mostly aimless, unorganized and unplanned. In terms of psycho-social life of the aged both generations still felt that they were not alienated from the family, neighbors, and the society. In terms of social welfare services both generations thought the aged needed basic services such as income maintenance, health care, housing services, and particularly they felt lack of social services. The old-aged generation was willing to travel to the distance taking more than one hour to receive social services that they would need. Both the middle-aged and the old-aged agreed upon the necessity of preparation for old age and the benefits of earlier preparation, however, they said that they could not prepare for their old age due to lack of social programs to help preparation for old age and due to spending for rearing and education of their children. In terms of perceived life in old age both middle-aged and old-aged generations tended to be slightly positive, but the degree of positiveness differed between respondents from urban area and those from rural area regardless of generations. Images of the aged were perceived to be overwhelmingly negative while positive images were very few in number regardless of generations. This finding may suggests that negative stereotypes on aging and the aged are also prevalent in Korean society like in Western societies. Based on findings of this study some implications for social policies in response to population aging in capital region were suggested.

• Journal of Teachers' Pension
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• v.2
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• pp.47-102
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• 2017

오늘날 대다수의 선진 국가들은 고령화 사회에 대비하여 자국의 노후소득보장 제도를 대대적으로 개혁해 오고 있다. 우리나라의 경우에서도 지난 2015년 사학연금제도의 개혁이 이러한 취지에 해당될 수 있을 것이다. 본 연구에서는 고령화 사회의 문제가 단순히 노인부양비용의 증가 그 자체가 아니라, 평균수명의 증가에도 불구하고 늘어나게 된 노후의 삶에 대한 시간적 배분이 근로와 여가에 걸쳐 균형적으로 이루어지지 않고, 사회적 부양을 필요로 하는 노후의 여가만 일방적으로 늘어나고 있다는 점을 문제점으로 지적하였다. 따라서 이러한 차원에서 볼 때 고령화 사회의 문제는 생애근로기간의 연장을 통해서만 효과적으로 극복할 수 있을 것으로 생각된다, 하지만 이와는 반대로 개인별로 건강상태나 가족상황 등의 이유로 생애근로주기의 연장이 불가능한 사람들을 위하여 별도의 제도적 장치가 추가적으로 마련되어야 할 것이다. 종합해 보면, 고령화 사회의 노동시장 문제는 개인별로 다양한 욕구나 능력을 반영하여 각자에게 다양한 선택권을 보장해 줄 수 있는 방향으로 개선되어야 할 필요가 있다. 본 연구에서는 고령화 사회에 대비하여 연금수급연령 상향조정의 필요성을 사학연금제도를 중심으로 살펴보고, 대신 그로 인해 발생할 수 있는 소득공백문제와 연금가입경력 공백문제 등 제반의 충격을 흡수할 수 있는 제도적 장치로서 점진적 퇴직제도의 도입방안을 제안하였다. 개략적으로 사학연금제도에 있어서 점진적 퇴직모형은 법정연금수급연령의 인상 일정에 따라 다음과 같이 운영하는 방안을 제안하였다. 먼저 법정연금수급연령이 60세로 유지되는 2022년까지의 단기적 대책으로서 여기서 점진적 퇴직의 자격연령은 모든 가입자에게 60세로 적용하도록 한다. 이 경우 가입자들의 신분구분에 따라 각각 교수 5년, 교원 2년(문제해결에 대한 정책적 의지에 따라 이행구간을 확장할 수도 있음) 그리고 교직원 0년의 조기의 점진적 퇴직이 허용되므로, 현재 교원이나 교수의 임용대란문제에 효과적으로 대응을 할 수 있는 장점이 있다. 다음으로는 2023년 이후 2033년 사이 법정연금수급연령의 인상단계에 해당되는 기간 동안의 대책으로서 여기서는 교수, 교원, 교직원에게 적용되는 정년연령과 매년도 법정연금수급연령 사이의 기간을 조기의 점진적 퇴직 이행구간으로 정하도록 한다. 그리고 이러한 이행구간에 상당하는 기간만큼 후기의 점진적 퇴직 이행구간을 별도로 설정하여 그에 적절한 혜택이 주어질 수 있도록 한다. 마지막으로 2033년 이후부터는 교수, 교사, 교직원의 신분구분 없이 모두에게 적용되는 사항으로서 65세를 기준으로 그 이전의 5년은 사학연금의 적용을 받는 조기의 점진적 퇴직 그리고 그 이후의 5년은 국민연금의 적용을 받는 후기의 점진적 퇴직이 이루어질 수 있도록 한다. 그리고 전체 10년의 점진적 퇴직 이행구간 동안 개인별로 퇴직시점이나 퇴직형태의 선택이 자유롭게 이루어질 수 있도록 하기 위하여 보험수리의 원칙에 입각한 감액률 또는 가산율의 엄격한 적용을 제안하였다. 그리고 고령계층이 자신의 근로시간을 단계적으로 단축할 수 있도록 하고, 그 과정에서 발생하게 되는 소득의 감소부분은 별도의 제도적 방법(가교연금, 시간가치적립계정 등)으로 충당하도록 하는 방안을 제안하였다. 나아가 점진적 퇴직제도의 운영방식은 근로시간의 단축뿐만 아니라 작업부담의 경감 등에 대해서도 인정을 해주도록 해줌으로써 임금피크제도의 기능과 연계가 가능할 수 있도록 할 것을 제안하였다.

• Journal of Legislation Research
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• no.41
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• pp.87-123
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• 2011

Korea is expected to become an 'aged society' with more than 14 percent of the public aged 65 years or more by 2018. The rapid aging is giving rise to various problems within the society along with falling birthrate in a short period of time. In this context, the role and function of laws on welfare for the aged must be particularly emphasized. Also the Senior Citizens Welfare Act is of great importance as it provides social welfare service on the basis of functional connection with social insurance and public assistance. First, this paper looks into the history of laws related to welfare for the elderly such as the Senior Welfare Act, the Act on Long-term Care Insurance for Senior Citizens and the Basic Old Age Pension Act as well as the findings of earlier studies. In the second place, it will break down such laws by main components aiming to examine details of the laws and questions raised regarding them and to seek ways to achieve improvement with an emphasis on health care, old age income security, housing welfare(assisted living facilities), job security for the aged. The Senior Welfare Act offers substance of social welfare service for the elderly. Income security, health and medical care, welfare measures through long-term care and assisted living facilities, social participation by working are the key elements and all of them should be closely associated to ensure citizens get sufficient public support in their old age. For this purpose, the Senior Welfare Act is under a normative network with laws such as Act on Long-term Care Insurance for Senior Citizens and Basic Old Age Pension Act. Current laws on welfare for the aged including Senior Welfare Act are not sufficiently responsive to the aged society of the 21st century. Income security combined with decent social participation, health and medical care closely connected with long-term care system, efficient expense sharing between government and local government, enhancement of effectiveness of welfare measures can be considered as means to improve current welfare system so that the elderly can enjoy their old age with dignity and respect.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.721-739
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• 2015

The importance of the old age income security will increase for an aging society due to the deepening income polarization. The National Pension(NP) is a representative Social Security scheme in charge of old age income security as well as income redistribution for the insured. Studies by Kim (2002), Kim et al. (2003), and Hong (2013) have reported the possibility of unsatisfactory income redistribution of the NP. Recently Choi (2015) attributed those results to an unnoticed defect in the benefit formula. This study is a test for the unsatisfactory income redistribution of the current National Pension using early participants who have now become pensioners. The method aggregates cohorts and combines individual history data before the year 2013 and the results of the actuarial projection model of the 2013 after the year 2014. The results are divided by measures taken. The redistribution is obviously progressive by the income replacement rate; however, it is significantly regressive when measured by the net benefit theoretically as more plausible. Considering the effect of differing lifetime contribution year among income classes, the regressive redistribution will prevail more in the future pensioners.

• 한국노년학
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.15-31
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to explore the transition to retirement of the middle-aged in Korea according to the notion of "the career job" and "the bridge job". In order to scrutinize basic elements for the transition, three aspects such as the job history of the middle-aged, the characteristics of the demographic and economic status were investigated through the one to three wave of Korean Retirement and Income Study(KReIS). In addition, the characteristics of the career job and the bridge job were analyzed by both descriptive statistics and the conditional transition probability. Moreover, the influential factors to the job status of the middle-aged were examined by the multi-nominal logistic regression. The results of the study are as followed: first, gradual retirement is increasing in the transition to retirement of the middle-aged in Korea. Over time, the career job is decreasing whilst bridge job is increasing. However, the quality of the bridge job is poorer than the career job in terms of wage, employment status, industry, and occupation. Lastly, the middle-aged who work in the bridge job have vulnerable characteristics, so they work in the bridge job to supplement their economic needs. The results can be influential in the adjustment of the labor policies for the middle-aged in Korea. Moreover, the partial pension system could be a good alternative since the pension system is needed to protect the vulnerable situation of the middle-aged in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.42
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• pp.169-198
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• 2000

This paper attempts to analyze the early retirement in the OECD countries and discuss implication of that in the old age policy in Korea. The increase of the early retirement in the almost all OECD countries is a common fact. Especially the rate of early retirement rapidly increased in the 1980s, mostly reflecting the high rate of unemployment and states' policies to reduce it. However, it varies across countries: the unemployment compensation pathway in France, the mixture of social assistance and private insurance in England, VUT in Netherland, the privatization of the early retirement in the U. S., and partial retirement and labor market policy in Sweden. The early retirement in the advanced countries contributes to de-institutionalization and de-standardization in life course model. It resulted in the erosion of the ordinary conception that the retirement was the beginning of the old age. And the last phase of life course became blurred. With respect to the problem of the early retirement, there is a big difference between Korea and the OECD countries. Above all, the retirement age is 55 years in many companies and the public pension is not universalized in Korea. Accordingly the policy for income security of the old age in Korea should be connected with social security policy such as the gradual extension of the retirement age and the expansion of the public pension and labor market policy such as job training for the old age, transformation of the seniority wage system etc.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.71-130
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• 2008

Using data from the Korean Labor & Income Panel Study (KLIPS), this study investigates private income transfers in Korea, where adult children have undertaken the most responsibility of supporting their elderly parents without well-established social safety net for the elderly. According to the KLIPS data, three out of five households provided some type of support for their aged parents and two out of five households of the elderly received financial support from their adult children on a regular base. However, the private income transfers in Korea are not enough to alleviate the impact of the fall in the earned income of those who retired and are approaching an age of needing financial assistance from external source. The monthly income of those at least the age of 75, even with the earning of their spouses, is below the staggering amount of 450,000 won, which indicates that the elderly in Korea are at high risk of poverty. In order to analyze microeconomic factors affecting the private income transfers to the elderly parents, the following three samples extracted from the KLIPS data are used: a sample of respondents of age 50 or older with detailed information on their financial status; a five-year household panel sample in which their unobserved family-specific and time-invariant characteristics can be controlled by the fixed-effects model; and a sample of the younger split-off household in which characteristics of both the elderly household and their adult children household can be controlled simultaneously. The results of estimating private income transfer models using these samples can be summarized as follows. First, the dominant motive lies on the children-to-parent altruistic relationship. Additionally, another is based on exchange motive, which is paid to the elderly parents who take care of their grandchildren. Second, the amount of private income transfers has negative correlation with the income of the elderly parents, while being positively correlated with the income of the adult children. However, its income elasticity is not that high. Third, the amount of private income transfers shows a pattern of reaching the highest level when the elderly parents are in the age of 75 years old, following a decreasing pattern thereafter. Fourth, public assistance, such as the National Basic Livelihood Security benefit, appears to crowd out private transfers. Private transfers have fared better than public transfers in alleviating elderly poverty, but the role of public transfers has been increasing rapidly since the welfare expansion after the financial crisis in the late 1990s, so that one of four elderly people depends on public transfers as their main income source in 2003. As of the same year, however, there existed and occupied 12% of the elderly households those who seemed eligible for the National Basic Livelihood benefit but did not receive any public assistance. To remove elderly poverty, government may need to improve welfare delivery system as well as to increase welfare budget for the poor. In the face of persistent elderly poverty and increasing demand for public support for the elderly, which will lead to increasing government debt, welfare policy needs targeting toward the neediest rather than expanding universal benefits that have less effect of income redistribution and heavier cost. Identifying every disadvantaged elderly in dire need for economic support and providing them with the basic livelihood security would be the most important and imminent responsibility that we all should assume to prepare for the growing aged population, and this also should accompany measures to utilize the elderly workforce with enough capability and strong will to work.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.1559-1575
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• 2009

As the basic old-age pension system was enforced in 2008, the base for old-age income security was founded. However, due to the basic old-age pension played a minor role as assistant allowance, it did not reach to sufficient level to cover full income security system. It is estimated that the dependency on private transfer income among the elderly who are difficult to be economically independent is still high. Therefore the poverty rate of the elderly households, who are not economically active or who are not protected by old-age income security system, is more likely to be higher than that of non-elderly households. Based on the assumption that public transfer income system should become a central means of old-age life guarantee, this study examined the poverty mitigation effects among the elderly households by comparing the private transfer income and the public transfer income. For this purpose, we selected single-elderly-households who have been considered the most vulnerable to poverty. We used 2006- 2008 Household Income and Expenditure Survey dataset that contained single-elderly who were older than 65 years old. To understand the conditions of poverty among single-elderly-households and the degree of poverty-reducing effect originated from income transfer system, we compared the poverty rates of total households and the whole elderly households. Next, we analysed the poverty of the single-elderly-households by social demographic factors such as gender, age, and economic activity. Our major findings are as follows: First, the poverty rate of the whole elderly households were not reduced, even though the basic old-age pension and long-term care management system were enforced in 2008. Second, half of the elderly households including single-elderly-households belonged to the absolute poverty line. Relatively higher level of poverty among the single-elderly-households was found especially those who were female, unemployed, low-educated, older, and rural single-elderly-households. Third, the effect of the public transfer income on mitigating the single-elderly-households poverty showed a little progress. However, even greater poverty reducing effect was found by the private transfer income system. Fourth, in a group of the public transfer systems, the public assistance such as supporting living costs contributed more to reduce poverty of the elderly population than the public pension system did.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.109-142
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• 2018

This paper aims to analyze the Award wage system in Australia for construction workers. Considering low wages and precarious employment situation of construction workers in general, it is of advantage especially for them in Australia. Furthermore, it seems to be instructive for Korean construction workers, who stand in more precarious and unstable situation and furthermore are lack of fair wage and social safety. After strong and longstanding labour struggle in the late 19th century in Australia, it has been established a tripartite institution called as 'tribunal' between trade unions, employers, and the government. Under the highly institutionalized form of industrial relations, it functions as an arbitration and conciliation system between labour and management. The Award wage system stands in the middle point. This Award wage system including various welfare provisions is settled by the tribunal, today renamed as Fair Work Commission. In this wage system should be defined level of minimum wages according to the various skill levels, which are in turn connected with compulsory superannuation and Medicare as well as vocational education and training. Furthermore, it provides especially for the construction workers, who suffer from job instability, so-called 'portable benefits', which relate to long service leave and redundancy pay. Considering general conditions of precarious construction workers in Korea, In that respect, the Australian Award wage system would be very instructive for our social wage and safety system for construction workers.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.555-568
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• 2004

The current national pension system tends to be sexually discriminatory in that it excludes elderly women. It is because the system is based on family incomes usually earned by men. Considering structural changes in a family - for example, a growing divorce rate, an increasing number of unmarried couples living together, and broken families - and socio-economic changes - such as an improved level of women's education and more female participation in economic activities, this paper will make some suggestions as follows: 1) to introduce basic pension system which guarantees incomes for the elderly with "one pension per person" policy; 2) to enlarge voluntary enrollment; 3) to implement pension credit system which pays women allowances for childbirth and upbringing; 4) to improve ways of allotting retirement pension of a husband; also to provide for an elderly woman both divided pension that derives from her husband's pension and an old-age pension of her own.