• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.161-187
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• 2010

This study begins with two research interests. Firstly, there seems to be a break of research in the field of family policy in Korea which exists especially in regard to family law. Family law was originally the core of state interventions in family life, but has been neglected because of the lack of literature with comparative research methods. This shortcoming needs to be addressed. Secondly, through inquiry into the definition of family or family policy with the lens of the law, the definition of family or family policy can be correctly extended. With these two interests combined, this research tries to derive an analytical tool - maintenance community - of the law and compare some important points of the family law of Korea with those of 16 EU-countries in terms of regime classification. The method used is, firstly, to describe the subjects of family law with a focus on partnering and parenting without subjective interpretation, and secondly, to classify the countries' family-law regimes with the criteria of privacy and autonomy using cluster analysis. The results show that the countries can be classified into three clusters: Nordic (Norway and Sweden), West-Northern (Denmark, France, England, Finland, and Belgium) and Middle South (Italy, Spain, Austria, Portugal, Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and Korea). This result can be compared to a precedent research result which showed that 21 OECD countries can be classified in three clusters according to family policy. The number of the clusters is the same as this study, but some countries belong to other clusters; for example Denmark and Finland belong to the Nordic cluster according to family policy, while they belong to the West-Northern according to family law, and Austria, Germany, and Ireland belong to the Middle-South cluster according to family law, while they belong to the Continental according to family policy. From this result we can interpret Korean family law to be in the middle range according to both criteria of privacy and autonomy like other South-European countries including some Continental countries. We can make some theoretical suggestions. The fact that both family law and family policy regimes in countries can be classified into three clusters can be interpreted to mean that there exists parallelism between family law and family policy in a broad sense. But from the fact that some countries belong to different clusters according to family law and family policy, we can say that the family policy in a country is not always consistent with family law.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.149-162
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• 2024

This study is a longitudinal study of female older adults living alone, one of the most vulnerable groups in our society, to determine how their depression changes over time and what factors affect their depression. At the same time, considering that there is a large difference in age among the same older adults, this study divided the female older adults into the young-old and the old-old to see how the predictors of depression in each group differ from each other. The main findings are as follows First, depression among female older adults living alone appears to have a declining pattern over time. In the conditional model, factors affecting the initial level of the depression trajectory among women living alone were found to be associated with lower initial depression values among those living in metropolitan areas rather than non-metropolitan areas, better subjective health, and those who did not exercise. Next, we examined the factors affecting rate of change (slope) in depression among female living alone older adults and found that the higher the age, the larger the metropolitan area, the better the subjective health, the less socializing, and the more socializing, the greater the decrease in depression level. Finally, there were some differences in the pathways affecting the initial value and slope of depression among female older adults living alone between the early and late older adults. Specifically, the higher the initial level of participation in social activities, the greater the change in depression among the late older adults, while there was no significant relationship among the early older adults. In the early older adults, better initial subjective health was associated with a larger change in depression than in the late older adults. Only in the late older adults did those who regularly exercised in the early years have higher initial depression values than those who did not. Based on the results of the above analyses, suggestions were made to reduce depression among female older adults living alone.