• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.31-50
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• 2015

This study attempted to empirically investigate the determinants of poverty transition of the working poor with disabilities from a dynamic perspective. Analyses were conducted on the data from Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled(PSED, Year 1-6), included the households with a disabled head of household. The working poor were defined as the household of which income fell below 120% of the absolute poverty line among the households just described. As results, The 6-year mean poverty rate for the working poor with disabilities included in the analysis was 31.4%, approximately three times of the poverty rate of the total population and the working poor with disabilities were found to have greater difficulty with poverty exit once having fell into poverty than all households living in poverty. And it was found that the economic activity factor was the key determinant of in-work poverty. In addition, employment of the working poor with disabilities did not lead straight to poverty exit, and the quality, rather than the status of, employment was the key determinant of poverty exit. The implications of the findings of this study are that it is essential to increase decent jobs, expand the social safety net of the working poor with disabilities and establish poverty reduction measures for each class of the working poor with disabilities to exit from poverty.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.62 no.3
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• pp.5-29
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• 2010

This study examines the welfare dynamics in Korea under the scheme of National Basic Livelihood Protection Program(NBLP). Data are drawn from Korean Welfare Panel study 2005~2007. Main findings are summarized as follows. First, the exit probabilities show a declining tendency with time on welfare increases. If the exit probabilities indeed decline over time, the earlier years on welfare deserve more interest in the policy perspective. Moreover, the vast majority of recipients are long-termers. Further efforts are needed to increase self-sufficiency through providing genuine opportunity and necessary support for recipients. Second, out-of-poverty exit and out-of-system exit are quite different in their properties. The results from the multivariate analysis confirm that the dropouts through out-of-system exit are virtually the same with those who remain on welfare. These results imply that the government should not resort to the negative policy proposals such as time limit and strengthening sanctions. Third, several explanatory variables have anticipated effect on welfare exit probabilities. Age, education, health, marital status, the presence of children, employment status have a certain level of impact on exit, with the only exception of gender. Since the identification of the determinants can facilitate sensible targeting on the potential leavers, these results have some implications on policy proposals.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.66 no.3
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• pp.185-208
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• 2014

This study is to identify the factors deterring or precipitating the exit from welfare recipiency to labor market in the Korean social assistance program. The results from the empirical analyses of the Korea Welfare Panel Study(KOWEPS) show that the duration dependency is not due to increasing welfare dependency with duration, but to the fact that longer stayers have many vulnerable conditions to escape from poverty. Particularly, the main factors determining the transition from recipiency to labor market are not individual or household characteristics such as human or social capital. Those having adolescents of secondary education in their households or participating in some effective labor market program such as job placement service tend to have significant effects on the exit rates from recipiency. That means that the institution-related factors such as the education and health supports combined with benefits and the effective labor market programs are important in the translation from recipiency to labor market of working-age recipients in the Korean social assistance scheme.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.147-174
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• 2007

This study examines how path dependency of working poor labor market segmented from the primary and the secondary labor market affects employment and quality of employment of working poor. It Further examines how path dependency makes working poor to remain in the labor market and makes it difficult for them to escape from a vicious poverty cycle. Data is based on the $3{\sim}7th$ Korea Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS). Markov's transition probability and discrete-time hazard analysis are used for analysis. This study finds that Korea labor market is divided into three parts; the primary labor market, the secondary labor market and the working poor labor market. The proportion of employed poor has been reduced, but the proportion of non economically-active working poor has been increased and has become the main group among the working poor. This shows that labor demand of working poor is fundamentally lacking and there are structural barriers that block working poor's employment itself. The regression analysis shows that the longer working poor labor market participation is, the lower poverty-exit rate. This is an evidence of vicious poverty cycle that the poor have little chance to exit from working poor labor market, once they step into it. Therefore, the longer their participation in poor labor market, the more likely they would move only within the closed working poor labor market. Consequently, it is necessary to fundamentally reform labor market structure and to alleviate negative perception and discrimination about the poor labor while activating labor demand.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.249-274
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• 2010

This study examines a casaul relationship between depression and welfare transitions of the National Basic Likelihood Protection Program. From a social selection perspective, prior high levels of depression are likely to select people into welfare or serve as a barrier to leaving welfare. From a social causation perspective, entering or exiting welfare can change the levels of depression. These hypotheses were tested using KOWEPS(Korean Welfare Panel study) 2005~2007. The results are as follows. First, entering welfare clearly increases the levels of depression. The increased economic stress resulting from falling into poverty seems to play a major role in the negative effect of welfare entry. Second, exiting welfare does not decrease the levels of depression. However, when welfare exits are classified into distinctive categories, welfare exit combined with concurrent poverty exit is likely to decrease the levels of depression. Third, high levels of depression clearly increase the probability of entering welfare regardless of the prior poverty status. Fourth, high levels of depression do not decrease the probability of exiting welfare, but rather increase the probability of an administrative disentitlement which leads to even worse economic conditions after exiting welfare. One implication of these findings is that negative policies such as time limit and strengthening sanctions can increase the number of welfare cyclers who are able-bodied but mentally weak.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.365-388
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• 2011

By analyzing 1998~2008 Korean Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS), this study examines socio-economic characteristics of people who become poor. The study also explores the reason why they are in the state of poverty. To find determinants affecting poverty entrance, discrete-time hazard models are applied. Major findings are as follows. The socio-economic characteristics driving people into poverty are in the middle way of the long-term poor and the non-poor, combining the characteristics of both groups. This implies that many cases of the newly poor tend to enter and exit from poverty repeatedly. Poverty entry rate was at a high level right after the economic crises, then was a downturn and remained fairly stable since 2000. However, the young, the high-educated, and even the professional are on the rise as a new poverty group. The major reason people become poor is temporary job loss. This factor is confirmed again by multi-variate analyses. In building anti-poverty policies, it is important to distinguish the long-term poor from the short-term poor. For the long-term poor, virtually the only affective policy will be income support. On the other hand, a labor-market strategy for jos security will be more effective for the short-term poor. The characteristics and determinants of poverty entry may affect poverty duration and exit in the future. Future research will be needed to investigate the relationship among these factors.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.71-104
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• 2018

This paper adopts a distributive performance process model of in-work poverty based on labor markets, households, and welfare states and analyzes the 4-11 waves of the Korean Welfare Panel Study during 2008-15. Previous studies on in-work poverty have focused on the definitions and concepts of in-work poverty by analyzing employment and unemployment persistence and repetition dynamics, but rarely paid attention to institutional distributive performance. In this regard, this study preforms a stepwise analysis of labor markets, households, and welfare states as a process of income generation in labor markets, satisfaction of welfare needs and income pooling at households, and deduction of social security contribution and income tax as well as receipt of public transfer income at welfare states. Results of empirical analysis show that in-work poverty had been on increase during 2008-11, followed by a decrease between 2012-15. At labor market stages, full time status had the most prominent impact on in-work poverty process, while status by employment and contract type have generated a huge variation as well. At household stages, household work intensity and number of earners contributed to reduction of in-work poverty, but the relations did not seen to be straightforward. However, welfare state played little role in lifting employees out of in-work poverty. In terms of institutional distributive process, in-work poverty was prevalent in either household-welfare state stage or labor market-household-welfare stage. Non-vulnerable group in terms of in-risk poverty was around 80% of the sample during the period of analysis, the size of which has remained constant.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.257-279
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• 2012

This study examined how employment status changes affects poverty transition of workable youth using 3years panel data from KoWePS(Korea Welfare Panel Study, 2007-2009). Findings and implications of this study as follows. First, although relative poverty rate of aged 18-34 is lower than other age groups, significant amount of youth experienced poverty once in 2007-2009(14.59%). This means that there are some of youth suffering for poverty and the aspect of youth poverty is very dynamic. Second, much of workable poor of youth had high level of education(45.9% in 2009) and they were unemployed or inactive in labor market(55.3% in 2009). These findings consistent with previous studies of youth poverty or youth employment. Third, workable youth who had changed employment status from employed to unemployed or inactive in labor market were likely to enter poverty and less likely to exit from poverty. Moreover youth who were non-standard employed had more possibility to be poor and less possibility to be not poor. These show that employment instability makes youth vulnerable to economic hardship, poverty. The result of this study suggest that anti-poverty programs which are related with the work-related programs and active labor market policy, should consider workable youth who have high level of human capital comparing other ordinary working poor. Because of much of youth are not poor in fixed time point, they can't be supported from existing social assistance program, like National Basic Livelihood Protection Program. As youth who experienced poverty in changing time need social support to prevent long-term poverty, government should contemplate adopting assistance program for workable poor youth.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.277-311
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• 2010

The powerful association between poverty and mental health has been recognized for many decades in the Western Countries. Despite growing poverty studies, there has been little attention to the association between poverty and mental health in Korea. In this article we examine the effects of the mental health on the poverty status transition. In this study we draw on nationally representative data from the The Korean Welfare Panel Study, to estimate the effects of depression and self-respects on the poverty status transition. Major findings are as follows. First, we find that there are mental health disparities between poor and non-poor classes. The mental health conditions of the poor are worse than the non-poor. Second, we find the strong correlations between the mental health and poverty status transition. Whether poor family exits poverty or not depends on the household head's mental health. Third, poverty experiences are different depending on the mental health conditions. To the mental ill-health family, the probabilities of poverty-exit are much lower and poverty duration is more long. Fourth, we find that family poverty status transitions are very significantly related with household head's mental health from the logistic model analysis. These findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between poor mental health and the experience of poverty in Korea. They also suggest that intervention programs to enhance the mental health of the poor are needed in order to reduce the poverty problem in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.351-374
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• 2005

This study examines dynamics of poverty in Korea, focusing on poverty duration and its determinants. Data come from Korean Labor and Income Panel Study(KLIPS), 1998-2003. KLIPS is a longitudinal survey of 5,000 families and their members which are representative of urban residents in Korea. Respondents of KLIPS annually report detailed information on their income, economic activities, and other socio-economic characteristics. This study use poverty exit probabilities to generate distributions of spell lengths, following Bane and Ellwood(1986)'s methodology. This study finds a high level of poverty exit rates in Korea. About three quarters of those beginning a poverty spell exit from poverty within two years. Only 14.3 percent of all the poverty spells consist of long spells which persists five years or more. Yet, a different picture emerges when spells of the poor persons at a given time are analysed. Persistent poor occupy a considerable share of all the poor. Almost 50 percent of those who would be in poverty at a given time are in the midst of poverty spells lasting five years or more. When repeat spells of poverty are also included in the analyses, the proportion of long-term poor increases further. 63 percent of persons poor at a given time are long-termers. The majority of long-term poor are members of families headed by the aged. They show both a low level of poverty exit rates and a high level of reentry rates, and thus are most likely to experience long-term poverty. In the first place, they occupy a substantial share of all the poor. The second who are likely to be poor longer is members of families headed by non-aged women. Researchers have recentlty paid much attention to the working poor who have increased since the economic crisis in 1997. Yet, it is very likely that families headed by non-aged male who largely consist of the working poor temporarily experience poverty. Findings for this study suggest that further studies and policy proposals addressing persistent poverty are necessary.