• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.35
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• pp.289-317
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• 1998

This study aims to review and evaluate the changes of the British social housing policy under the Conservative government(1979-1997), and to get some implications for the Korean case. The Conservatives tried to diminish the role of state in the realm of social welfare :in general, and to retreat the social housing policy in particular as a reaction to the' welfare state crisis' started from the early 1970s. In the realm of housing policy, privatisation and marketisation including the massive sale of council houses were driven enthusiastically. Public expenditure cut and redirection of the housing subsidy scheme were also implemented according to the changed policy orientation. The clear visible results of the policy changes can be seen as follows; radical changes of the housing tenure distribution, changing role of local authorities, and the worsening housing problems- housing shortages, residualisation, affordability problem, deepening dependency and the negative distribution of housing subsidy etc. Furthermore the goal of public expenditure cut, in fact, was not accomplished successfully. The results of this study support the argument that the Neo-liberalistic approach to the 'welfare state crisis' have resulted in reconstruction and redirection rather than total abolition of the role of state in welfare provision. This conclusion could provide important implications to Korean case, especially concerning the role of state in the social housing policy.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.327-335
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• 2014

Objectives: Several epidemiological studies on medical care utilization prior to suicide have considered the motivation of suicide, but focused on the influence of physical illnesses. Medical care expenditure in suicide completers with non-illness-related causes has not been investigated. Methods: Suicides motivated by non-illness-related factors were identified using the investigator's note from the National Police Agency, which was then linked to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment data. We investigated the medical care expenditures of cases one year prior to committing suicide and conducted a case-control study using conditional logistic regression analysis after adjusting for age, gender, area of residence, and socioeconomic status. Results: Among the 4515 suicides motivated by non-illness-related causes, medical care expenditures increased in only the last 3 months prior to suicide in the adolescent group. In the younger group, the proportion of total medical expenditure for external injuries was higher than that in the older groups. Conditional logistic regression analysis showed significant associations with being a suicide completer and having a rural residence, low socioeconomic status, and high medical care expenditure. After stratification into the four age groups, a significant positive association with medical care expenditures and being a suicide completer was found in the adolescent and young adult groups, but no significant results were found in the elderly groups for both men and women. Conclusions: Younger adults who committed suicide motivated by non-illness-related causes had a higher proportion of external injuries and more medical care expenditures than their controls did. This reinforces the notion that suicide prevention strategies for young people with suicidal risk factors are needed.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.369-377
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• 2018

Background: Catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) occurs when medical expenditure of a household passes over a certain ratio of household income. This research studied the effect of gender on CHE based on Korea Health Panel data. Methods: This study implemented binary logistic regression model to figure out whether gender affects CHE and how different gender groups show pattern of CHE process. With gender, age, marital status, income level, economic activity, membership of private insurance, existence of chronic disease, and self-rated health were included in the model. Results: Results showed that females faced CHE 1.5 times more than males (odds ratio, 1.241). Also, main determinants of CHE in female groups were marital status, while age and economic activity status were significant in male groups. Subgroup analysis displayed that married female under 35 years old are located in intersectionality of CHE including pregnancy and delivery, multiple health risk behaviors, mental stress, and relatively vulnerable social status due to lower income. Meanwhile, both gender above 50 years old faced remarkably high chance of CHE, which seems to be caused by complex health risk behaviors and chronic diseases. Conclusion: Such results implied not only that gender is an important determinant of CHE, but also other determinants of CHE differ according to gender, which suggests a necessity of gender-based CHE support and rescue policy.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.79-101
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• 2015

What is the role of welfare discourse? Michel Foucault suggests the power and knowledge relation that power in a particular society and period controls the society and members by creating knowledge affecting the formation of cognitive and normative systems. Having the formation of exclusions(constraint of cognition), and materiality and reality(normative system) as an analytical framework, this article attempts the exploration of welfare discourse analyses with public statements relating to welfare subjects of the four former Korean presidents. As a result, It is found that dominant epistemic system is formed by balancing welfare and growth and regarding jobs as the best welfare(the linkage of welfare-growth-employment), emphasizing individual economic responsibility and self-reliance, pursuing welfare selectivism, and excluding comprehensive welfare provisions. At the same time, it is observed that power is not always formulating systematic knowledge and that there is a gap between cognition and norm. While the Foucauldian discourse analysis provides a causal inference about low social welfare expenditure, excessive focus on the role of power as knowledge generator and infuser causes a question of how to accommodate contemporary changes into knowledge system.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.137-145
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• 2020

The aim of this study is to find out the time-series nexus of public debt and economic growth in Malaysia. For an upper-middle income country, Malaysia had experienced over 50% ratio of debt to GDP since 2009 until now. The question arises is whether this trend is healthy to the economy. With a focus into the debt-to-GDP ratio from 1970-2015, this study investigates the short-run and long-run relationship between public debt and economic growth in Malaysia. This study used secondary data by collecting time-series data (1970-2015) from the World Bank Data and Bank Negara Malaysia. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is applied in this study to examine the relationship between debt and economic growth. Based on ARDL framework, it shows that there is a long-run effect between the debt and economic growth in Malaysia. While the significance value of Error Correction Term shows that there is a long-run adjustment in the short run. Generally, this study found government expenditures, in the long run, strongly influence the GDP per capita. Through the findings, the government expenditures could increase the GDP per capita. The study also reveals that any increment of the debt ratio will result in reduction of the GDP per capita.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.206-219
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• 2019

This paper aims to demonstrate current health expenditure (CHE) and National Health Accounts of the years 2018 constructed according to the SHA2011, which is a manual for System of Health Accounts (SHA) that was published jointly by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Eurostat, and World Health Organization in 2011. Comparison is made with international trends by collecting and analyzing health accounts of OECD member countries. Particularly, scale and trends of the total CHE financing as well as public-private mix are parsed in depth. In the case of private financing, estimation of total expenditures for (revenues by) provider groups (HP) is made from both survey on the benefit coverage rate of National Health Insurance (by National Health Insurance Service) and Economic Census and Service Industry Census (by National Statistical Office); and other pieces of information from Korean Health Panel Study, etc. are supplementarily used to allocate those totals into functional classifications. CHE was 144.4 trillion won in 2018, which accounts for 8.1% of Korea's gross domestic product (GDP). It was a big increase of 12.8 trillion won, or 9.7%, from the previous year. GDP share of Korean CHE has already been close to the average of OECD member countries. Government and compulsory schemes' share (or public share), 59.8% of the CHE in 2018, is much lower than the OECD average of 73.6%. 'Transfers from government domestic revenue' share of total revenue of health financing was 16.9% in Korea, lower than the other social insurance countries. When it comes to 'compulsory contributory health financing schemes,' 'transfers from government domestic revenue' share of 13.5% was again much lower compared to Japan (43.0%) and Belgium (30.1%) with social insurance scheme.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.447-462
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• 2021

In insurance, the surrender rate is an important variable that threatens the sustainability of insurers and determines the profitability of the contract. Unlike other actuarial assumptions that determine the cash flow of an insurance contract, however, it is characterized by endogenous variables such as people's economic, social, and subjective decisions. Therefore, a microscopic approach is required to identify and analyze the factors that determine the lapse rate. Specifically, micro-level characteristics including the individual, demographic, microeconomic, and household characteristics of policyholders are necessary for the analysis. In this study, we select panel survey data of Korean Retirement Income Study (KReIS) with many diverse dimensions to determine which variables have a decisive effect on the lapse and apply the lasso regularized regression model to analyze it empirically. As the data contain many missing values, they are imputed using the random forest method. Among the household variables, we find that the non-existence of old dependents, the existence of young dependents, and employed family members increase the surrender rate. Among the individual variables, divorce, non-urban residential areas, apartment type of housing, non-ownership of homes, and bad relationship with siblings increase the lapse rate. Finally, among the financial variables, low income, low expenditure, the existence of children that incur child care expenditure, not expecting to bequest from spouse, not holding public health insurance, and expecting to benefit from a retirement pension increase the lapse rate. Some of these findings are consistent with those in the literature.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.91-99
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• 2017

Objectives: As in many low-income and middle-income countries, out-of-pocket (OOP) payments by patients or their families are a key healthcare financing mechanism in Bangladesh that leads to economic burdens for households. The objective of this study was to identify whether and to what extent socioeconomic, demographic, and behavioral factors of the population had an impact on OOP expenditures in Bangladesh. Methods: A total of 12 400 patients who had paid to receive any type of healthcare services within the previous 30 days were analyzed from the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey data, 2010. We employed regression analysis for identify factors influencing OOP health expenditures using the ordinary least square method. Results: The mean total OOP healthcare expenditures was US dollar (USD) 27.66; while, the cost of medicines (USD 16.98) was the highest cost driver (61% of total OOP healthcare expenditure). In addition, this study identified age, sex, marital status, place of residence, and family wealth as significant factors associated with higher OOP healthcare expenditures. In contrary, unemployment and not receiving financial social benefits were inversely associated with OOP expenditures. Conclusions: The findings of this study can help decision-makers by clarifying the determinants of OOP, discussing the mechanisms driving these determinants, and there by underscoring the need to develop policy options for building stronger financial protection mechanisms. The government should consider devoting more resources to providing free or subsidized care. In parallel with government action, the development of other prudential and sustainable risk-pooling mechanisms may help attract enthusiastic subscribers to community-based health insurance schemes.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.69 no.2
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• pp.9-30
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• 2017

Generally, regime shift occurs less frequently than policy change and/or government change. Regime shift needs alterations and changes along the three critical components which constitute a domestic regime: (1) the character of the socioeconomic coalition that rules the country; (2) the political and economic institutions through which power is acquired and exercised; and (3) the public policy profile that give political direction to the nation. This paper tries to examine characteristics of the welfare regime of Korea, and explore policy reform options for the welfare regime shift in Korea. From the viewpoint of livelihood security perspective, I firstly tries to examine development process of Korean welfare regime and specify the main characteristics of that regime. Secondly, I present three policy reform options: (1) reform of the formal political institutions such as electoral system and government type; (2) restructuring of the composition of government expenditure structure; and (3) reduction of the informal employment. These three policy reform options are related to the alteration of socioeconomic coalitions and the changes of the political and economic institutions. Instead of concluding remarks, I finally suggest two debate topics to the round table discussion.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.55
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• pp.181-204
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to offer a comprehensive analysis of the changing trends of the Korean income packaging, poverty rate, and level of income inequality from 1996 to 2002. In order to do that, this study used the micro-data of "Income and Expenditure Survey of Urban Households" by the National Statistical Office(NSO). Major results were as follows: (1) A ratio of public transfer in family income packaging increased at the DJ administration. (2) Poverty rate and Gini coefficient, which were 7.8% and 0.29 in 1996, rose to $8.8{\sim}10.4%$ and $0.30{\sim}0.34$ respectively during the year of 1998-2002. (3) However, poverty reduction effect and income inequality reduction effect of public income transfer increased preferably at the DJ administration. Those effects increased more since the enactment of National Basic Livelihood Security in 2000. Therefore, government should provide more national welfare programs to reduce the poverty rate and to improve better structure of income distribution.