• Health Policy and Management
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.275-296
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• 2012

Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University The national health insurance system in Korea is characterized as relatively high out-of-pocket payments, which are the principal source of catastrophic health expenditure (CHE). The objectives of this study are to estimate the incidence of household CHE and to clarify the characteristics that affect the occurrence and recurrence of household CHE using the Seoul Welfare Panel Survey database for 2008 and 2010. Thresholds to estimate CHE were 10% and 20% of the total household income (T/X), and 25% and 40% of the income excluding food share (T/Y). Determinants of the occurrence and recurrence of CHE at the threshold of T/X=10% were analysed using multiple logistic regression models. Out of the 3,665 households that responded in 2008 survey, households with CHE were 12.07% (T/X${\geq}$10%), 5.34% (T/X${\geq}$20%), 6.84% (T/Y${\geq}$25%), and 4.44% (T/Y${\geq}$40%). Risk factors associated with household CHE included living with a spouse, non-Medicaid beneficiary, householder unemployment, low household income, the number of disabled members, poor subjective health, and the number of chronic diseases. A total of 41.78% of households with CHE in 2008 repeatedly experienced CHE in 2010. Risk factors of CHE recurrence included decreased household income and an increase in chronic diseases over the two time periods, the number of members with disability or chronic diseases, and the presence of cancer patients in 2008. Households with lower socioeconomic and health status had a higher financial burden on health care than do their counterpart households. There is a need to enhance society-wide financial protection from health spending among vulnerable citizens in Seoul, particularly, households with low income, disabled members or cancer patients.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.131-143
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to examine the consumption expenditure structure for leisure & recreational service in urban households. For these purpose, the data collected 175 households in Pusan metropolitan city. Statistics employed for the analys were frequencies, means, one -way ANDVA, and multiple regression analysis. The major results of this study were as follows; Average monthly expenditure for leisure, recreational service was 190,342 won. And their expenditure for leisure & recreational service share was 12.89 % of total expenditure. Those expenditure with high income elasticity were hobby & culture education, and journey. And those with low income elasticity were play & inspection, and health & sports. In leisure & recreational service expenditure, the variables which influence were job and degree of household head, and income.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.159-178
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• 2011

Korea ranks high among the OECD member countries with a high out-of-pocket share. In 2006, the government implemented in full scale the policy of extending the health insurance benefit coverage. Included in the policy are lowering the out-of-pocket share of patients of serious case and expanding the medical bill ceiling system to mention just a few. This study proposes to confirm effectiveness of the benefit extension policy by identifying changes in 'out-of-pocket expenditure as a share of the ability to pay' and 'incidence rate of catastrophic health care expenditure' of each individual household as manifested before and after the benefit extension policy was implemented. The 1st and 3rd year data from the Korea Welfare Panel Study (KoWePS), conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA), were used for the analysis, where low-income households and ordinary households are sampled separately. While the absolute amount of 'out-of-pocket expenditure' occurred to the average household increased for the period 2005-2007, the 'out-of-pocket expenditure as a share of the ability to pay' decreased. At the same time, the share decreased in the case of low-income households and households with patients of chronic or serious case as contrasted with ordinary households. 'Incidence rates of catastrophic health care expenditure' of ordinary households for 2007 stood at 14.6%, 5.9% and 2.8% at the threshold of 10%, 20% and 30%, respectively. The rates decreased overall between 2005 and 2007, while those of low-income households with patients of serious case statistically significantly increased. An analysis of this study indicates that it is related with the medical bill ceiling system regardless of incomes introduced in 2007.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.507-520
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to analyze the changes in the housing instability of low-income households through their residential mobility. The concept of housing instability is measured by taking into consideration of housing types, number of moves, period of homelessness, and housing affordability index. The result of this study shows that housing instability of low-income households owned their homes is mainly caused from their old housing built in at least 1980, and that of tenant households is due to the heavy burden of rent-to-income ratio. By using multinominal logit model, the study finds that low-income tenant households are more likely to move upwards as they are man-headed, aged and relatively high-income if we categorize residential mobility into four types: upwards, equivalent, trade-off, and downwards migration. Considering that the share of homeowners moving downwards increases while the share of tenants moving upwards decreases as they reside increasingly nearby Seoul, the study finds that low-income households living in big cities are no better off to improve their residential instability for themselves than the low-incomes in local small and midium cities. Furthermore, both low-income owners and tenants are less likely to move downwards as the ratio of single-family housing in former residence increases. Such finding has a policy implication that government needs to maintain affordable single-family housing stock rather than supplying excessive unaffordable multi-family housing in order to enhance residential instability of low-incomes households.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.1015-1031
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• 2022

The objectives of this study were to classify the types of elderly households and to compare the characteristics of their dietary lifestyle. Panel data surveyed by Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI) for Food Purchase Attitudes over three years (2019 - 2021) were utilized for the analysis. Through a factor analysis, five common factors were extracted out of 19 basic variables related to dietary style, which indicate two kinds of consumer competency index (safe diet, traditional diet) and three kinds of purchase frequency (healthy food, meat & fish, fresh seafood). Applying the cluster analysis method, by using socioeconomic variables along the five common factors, elderly households aged 60 or older were grouped into four types. As a result, Type 1 elderly households accounted for 50.8%, Type 2 for 16.2%, Type 3 for 27.8%, and Type 4 for 5.2% out of all 870 elderly households. Type 1 is characterized as a low-income vulnerable class with a poor diet, Type 2 as a middle-income class with a healthy food-oriented diet, whereas Type 3 was classified as a middle-income class with a meat-oriented diet, and Type 4 as a high-income class with diverse dietary culture. It is necessary to expand the agri-food voucher pilot project to the entire country and also increase the monthly subsidy for the Type 1 elderly households. Implementing community kitchen projects for elderly single-person households, promoting senior internships by providing incentives to companies that employ retirees, the provision of education by local governments on a safe and balanced diet for Types 2 and 3, and the promotion of an elderly-friendly social environment are also recommended.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.47-51
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• 1980

This study attempts to assess the effect of the 1st class health insurance program to the income redistribution among the participants in a unit health insurance cooperative. One health insurance cooperative, located in Seoul, with 1558 members and 768 households was selected for this purpose. The relationships between amount of premium payed and benefits from the cooperative were compared. Necessary data were obtained from the bills submitted to the health insurance cooperative by the contracted medical institutions from 1st January 1977 to 30th June 1979. Households and individuals were the unit of the assessment. The indicators measuring income redistribution effect were the ratios between the benefit and expected benefit and the ratios between the benefit and the mean benefit. The major findings were: 1. The ratios between the benefits and the expected benefits were lower than 1 in the high income group and greater than 1 in the middle and lower income groups. This fact imply that the income redistribution effect was shown in the studied groups. It was shown that the middle income group received the greatest benefit, and then the lower income group. 2. The ratios between the benefit ana the mean benefit of the households in the higher standard income grade, were found to be higher. This means that the equity of the benefits of households were not achieved by the policy of the health insurance plan. 3. The health insurance utilization rates of the higher standard income group, measured by the household unit, were higher, and by the individual unit, the same rates of the middle income group were higher than other groups.

• Journal of Korea Planning Association
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.101-116
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• 2018

Paying an attention to the issue of energy poverty of low-income households and ensuing regressivity of energy consumption, this study empirically analyzes the effects of both household and housing characteristics on heating energy consumption in an integrated way and identifies their causal structure based on the 2016 Korea Housing Survey data provided by the Korean government. Multiple regression analysis shows that household income and deteriorated level of housing, such as age and degree of cracks have positive effects and floor area of housing has a negative effect on the heating energy consumption per unit area of housing (HECPUH). Path analyses further reveal that the direct effect of household income on HECPUH is offset by the indirect effects that are mediated by deteriorated level and floor area of housing, making the total effect statistically insignificant. As a result, there is no significant difference in HECPUH across all income strata, implying that low-income (high-income) households pay more (less) heating costs relative to their income level, since they reside in the houses with relatively low (high) energy efficiency. To deal with this regressive causal structure of energy consumption, a policy option is recommended to improve energy efficiency of low-income housing through the government assistance in its maintenance and repair.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.48-59
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• 2019

Background: The purpose of this study is to provide the data for discussions related to oral health promotion policies for single-person households by analyzing the status of unmet dental needs and related factors in single-person households in Korea, based on the Anderson model. Methods: The data, obtained from 544 single-person households of those over 20 years old who were targeted for the 6th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, were analyzed through a complex sample frequency analysis, complex sample cross analysis (Rao-Scott chi-square test), and complex sample binary logistic regression analysis on a complex sampling design. Results: The most frequently given reason for an unmet dental need among single-person households was economic (52.4%). Factors related to the unmet dental needs of single-person households are smoking, which is a predisposing factor; personal income levels, which are an enabling factor; chewing discomfort; and limited daily activities, which are need factors. Smokers, the high-income group, the chewing-discomfort group, and the limited activity group showed high unmet dental care experience. Smokers had a 2.75 times higher rate of unmet dental care than non-smokers, and the high-income group had a 5.29 times higher rate of unmet dental needs than the median group. The rate of unmet dental needs for the chewing discomfort group was 3.27 times higher than the non-chewing discomfort group, and the limited activity group had a 7.87 times higher rate of unmet dental needs than the non-limited activity group. Conclusion: It is necessary to map out policies designed to help maintain and promote met dental needs considered to be internally heterogeneous to single-person householders, based on the Anderson model.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.352-359
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• 2021

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the geographic distribution of diabetes mortality in Japan and identify socioeconomic factors affecting differences in municipality-specific diabetes mortality. Methods: Diabetes mortality data by year and municipality from 2013 to 2017 were extracted from Japanese Vital Statistics, and the socioeconomic characteristics of municipalities were obtained from government statistics. We calculated the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) of diabetes for each municipality using the empirical Bayes method and represented geographic differences in SMRs in a map of Japan. Multiple linear regression was conducted to identify the socioeconomic factors affecting differences in SMR. Statistically significant socioeconomic factors were further assessed by calculating the relative risk of mortality of quintiles of municipalities classified according to the degree of each socioeconomic factor using Poisson regression analysis. Results: The geographic distribution of diabetes mortality differed by gender. Of the municipality-specific socioeconomic factors, high rates of single-person households and unemployment and a high number of hospital beds were associated with a high SMR for men. High rates of fatherless households and blue-collar workers were associated with a high SMR for women, while high taxable income per-capita income and total population were associated with low SMR for women. Quintile analysis revealed a complex relationship between taxable income and mortality for women. The mortality risk of quintiles with the highest and lowest taxable per-capita income was significantly lower than that of the middle-income quintile. Conclusions: Socioeconomic factors of municipalities in Japan were found to affect geographic differences in diabetes mortality.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.471-484
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• 2021

The characteristics of poverty can be comprehensively revealed from the two angles of income and multidimensional. This paper compares China's rural income poverty measure with multidimensional poverty index using data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) by focusing on the static and dynamic disparities, and analyzes the factors influencing poverty through the Logit model. The results show that there exists a substantial mismatch in who is deemed poor, 60 percent of multidimensional poverty households are not considered poor in terms of income poverty, and 70 percent of income poverty households are not considered poor in terms of multidimensional poverty; There is a high level of disparity between the dynamics of the two measures of poverty. Among those who rose in the income dimension, only about 7 percent also rose in the multidimensional measure from 2016 to 2018.