• Land and Housing Review
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.133-144
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• 2013

It is commonplace to refer to the Nordic countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland as a distinctive and homogenous welfare regime. As far as social housing is concerned, however, the institutional heritage of the respective countries significantly frames the ways in which social housing is understood, regulated and subsidized, and, in turn, how housing regimes respond to the general challenges to the national welfare states. The paper presents a historical institutionalist approach to understanding the diversity of regime responses in the modern era characterized by increasing marketization, welfare criticism and internationalization. The aim is to provide outside readers a theoretically guided empirical insight into Scandinavian social housing policy. The paper first lines up the core of the inbuilt argument of historical institutionalism in housing policy. Secondly, it briefly introduces the distinctive ideal typical features of the five housing regimes, which reveals the first internal distinction between the universal policies of Sweden and Denmark selective policies of Iceland and Finland. The Norwegian case constitutes a transitional model from general to selective during the past quarter of a decade. The third section then concentrates on the differences between Denmark, Sweden and Norway in which social housing is, our was originally, embedded in a universal welfare policy targeting the general level of housing quality for the entire population. Differences stand out, however, between finance, ownership, regulation and governance. The historical institutional argument is, that these differences frame the way in which actors operating on the respective policy arenas can and do respond to challenges. Here, in this section we lose Norway, which de facto has come to operate in a residual manner, due to contemporary effects of the long historical heritage of home ownership. The fourth section then discusses the recent challenges of welfare criticism, internationalization and marketization to the universal models in Denmark and Sweden. Here, it is argued that the institutional differences between the Swedish model of municipal ownership and the Danish model of independent cooperative social housing associations provides different sources of resistance to the prospective dismantlement of social housing as we know it. The fifth section presents the recent Danish reform of the governance model of social housing policy in which the housing associations are conceived of as 'dialogue partners' in the local housing policy, expected to create solutions to, rather than produce problems in social housing areas. The reform testifies to the strategic ability of the Danish social housing associations to employ their historically grounded institutional relative independence of the public system.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.51-61
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to suggest the basic data on the direction of housing research trends by dividing both research methods and research contents through precedent studies related to elderly housing. We drew four major conclusions through this research. First, in general, the research activities for elderly housing has been conducted actively since 2000 to begin in earnest after 1990. This result shows that it is related with the reform of welfare laws for the elderly in 1993, with the change of government policies and the increase of social interest in elderly people's lives. Second, early studies had been started to focus on elderly home residents if we look into research results according to research methods. In 1993, The Elderly Welfare Act was reformed by the government and then researches for elderly welfare facilities were also increased by a permission of government to run private elderly welfare facilities for making profit. This movement caused to expand research targets from general elderly people to their families, facility staffs and experts. Third, in case of research contents past studies were mostly conducted on the space planning and its actual situation. However, current studies are made under diverse viewpoint with the increase of elderly housing and elderly welfare facilities according to reforms of laws and changes of resident's perception. Fourth, because of rapid transition to an aging society the studies of elderly housing were influenced by the changes of policies and social consciousness.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.69-79
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• 2010

Canada is a democratic country, yet it keeps a social democratic system in which the government is in charge of welfare of its people. And this is one of the most significant features about the country. Her public and private pension system has been effective since the 1920s, securing its people's fundamental income. In particular, the public medical system applies to its every citizen and performs its role. This system is called the National Medical System as well as "MEDICARE" named after its related law. However, there has been a significant change in the national medical and welfare policy due to the budget deficit. In other words, the policy was mainly implemented to welfare facilities in the past, but the policy changed to a welfare policy for the elderly with a concentration on the support for self-reliance of senior citizens since the reform. The purpose of this study is to provide data and implications for Korea through the analysis of the current situation and distinct features of the housing welfare system in Canada. This study has researched the literature on the subject with an analytic focus on three aspects that are the fundamental frame of the system, essential content (support for self-reliance and facility composition), and distinct features of the housing for the elderly. In other words, they are, first, how the fundamental frame of the housing welfare system for the elderly is composed; second, how the service for self-reliance welfare and facility service are composed; and third, what their scale and distinct spatial features of general houses for the elderly with self-reliance are. A comparative study was conducted in detail on courses and characteristics of the housing welfare system for senior citizens in Canada and the USA of North America. In particular, it reveals the scale and distinct spatial features of public houses for the elderly with self-reliance in British Columbia (BC) which is one of the main provinces of Canada.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.41
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• pp.119-146
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• 2000

The goals and strategies of welfare-to-work (WTW) policies have been sources of contentious political debate. In the United States, despite 20 years of welfare reform, there remain important differences of opinion regarding how best to design and deliver WTW programs. The proliferation of state and local WTW experiments has led to the identification of two ideal-types of WTW programs: the Labor Force Attachment and Human Capital Development models. Most of the recent policy debate about WTW in America has focused on the relative merits and performance of LFA and HCD. While the Primary goal of the LFA model is for welfare recipients to achieve a rapid transition into work, the HCD model seeks to improve the long-term employability of welfare dependents through education and skill development. LFA policies tend to be strongly outcome-oriented and generally can yield quick results. Their "any job is a good job" philosophy has proved attractive to policy-makers who are anxious to see concrete results in a short-term period. In contrast, the HCD policies do not simply dump welfare dependents at the bottom of the labor market, but aim to secure relatively stable and well-paid jobs. However, these strengths are offset by several practical weaknesses including high unit costs and long-term investment in human capital. In recent years, LFA policies have been increasingly favored by both policy officials and politicians in the United States. The introduction of Temporaray Assistance to Needy Families of 1996 has been accelerating the trend. What is going to happen to welfare recipients? This simple shift to the LFA model, however, will only see an alarming increase of working poor in a near future.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.324-335
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• 2017

Background: The aim of this study is to analyze determinants of welfare attitudes toward healthcare services in South Korea, using three main theories: self-interest (positive welfare attitudes if the policy fulfills people's personal interests), symbolic attitudes (positive welfare attitudes if the person is politically progressive or egalitarian), and sociotropic perception (positive welfare attitudes if the person experienced positive aggregated collective experiences of societal events and trends regarding the policy). Although the definition of the welfare attitude is rather ambiguous in literatures, in this investigation, we operationalize the concept as the 'willingness to pay higher taxes to improve the level of health care services for all people in Korea' which shows individuals' actional propensity. Methods: We used the health module from the International Social Survey Program 2011 for the analysis (N= 1,391). Five logistic regression models were built successively using two variables for each theory to measure key concepts of self-interest, symbolic attitudes, and sociotropic perceptions as independent variables. Results: The result showed self-interest and symbolic attitudes factors to be strong determinants of welfare attitudes towards healthcare services in South Korea, whereas sociotropic perception factors have inconsistent effects. Conclusion: For a more politically elaborated healthcare reform in South Korea and elsewhere, there needs to be further research on various dimensions and determinants of welfare attitudes to understand popular basis of welfare expansion, especially in the era of inequality.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.165-184
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• 2005

Japan has remained a welfare laggard among advanced industrial democracies. Therefore, the introduction of the public long-term care insurance(koteki kaigo hoken in Japanese) in April of 2000 looks very unique in terms of the Japanese social security tradition, because it can be interpreted as the expansion of social security system and the weakening of the market power over the livelihood of the ordinary people. In the era of globalization, in which even the highly developed welfare states are forced to shrink their social security systems, Japan, a welfare laggard, looks like being headed to the opposite direction. This article aims to define the character of the public long-term care insurance, and thereby, to evaluate the recent social policy of the Japanese government. This study follows the social democratic model in the study of the welfare state development, which assumes that, under the condition of a weak social democratic party and a fragmented labor movement, the introduction of the long-term care insurance is not equal to the improvement of the Japanese social security system. The main argument of this article is that the long-term care insurance, notwithstanding its appearance as an expansion of public sphere, is part of market-oriented neo-liberal social reforms, which have remained the main feature of the Japanese social policies since the mid-1970's. For this, this study will do a longitudinal analysis on the social consequences of the long-term care insurance incurred to the Japanese social security system for the long-term care, focusing on the income redistribution, the marketization of long-term care sector and the changes in the financial burden of the government, social insurers and general citizens.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.51
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• pp.5-28
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• 2002

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issues and the characteristics of the recent social security pension debate in the United States. For the purpose the transforming process from the funded system to the pay-as-you-go system in the 1930s, three alternatives of social security reform proposed by the Social Security Administration in 1996, and the other various alternatives proposed by the politicians, the business leaders and the scholars were analysed. While the alternatives were compared, the critical issues could be identified. The core issues were as follows. First, the individual accounts should be newly made or not? Second, who is the main administrator, government or private investment companies? Third, what is important, the inter-generational and the vertical income redistribution effect or the individual equity in social security pension system? Besides, the different positions of the social forces were also examined. The supporters of privatizing the social security pension, supporters of IA and PSA, prefer the value of equity, the effect of promoting savings, the private management of the social security funds, and the investment of the funds to the private capital markets. The supporters of pay-as-you-go system, supporters of MB, prefer the inter-generational and the vertical income redistribution effect of social security pension, and were convinced that fundamental changes of the systems are not necessary, and the insolvency problem could be overcome through a few reform, for example, increasing the rate and decreasing the benefits.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.57-68
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to investigate the current characteristics of healthcare and welfare policies in Japan focused on the related policies in 2000's. In Japan, with the perspectives of entering the super-aged society by 2005 and the movement of all of the baby boom generation into the elderly generation by 2015, more rapid progress to the aging society is expected. From this situation, Japanese government has developed diverse elderly-oriented strategies such as "structural reform of social security", "nursing care system" and "gold plan 21" in 2000's. However, most of the related researches targeted the period to early 2000's, excluding the papers about the individual policies. Recently in our country, many related policies have been developed such as the enforcement of "long term care insurance system for the elderly" by 5 year period reevaluations and the preparation for 2nd step of "Plan for Ageing Society and Population"(2011~2015). At this moment, the investigation on the related policies of Japan could give appropriate references to us, a late starter of aging society.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.329-348
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• 2010

Following the welfare state typology well known, the typology in terms of individual system in welfare state has been widely examined and, pension which is the biggest and most important in welfare state has been classified into Beveridge and Bismarckian types based on their pension system design. Such typology focused on benefit type or size of private pension has been recently refined to add a new type - 'Bismarckian Lite' type - in addition to traditional Beveridge and Bismarckian types. Whereas the pension reforms in the developed countries has been changes within their pension regimes, the Korean pension reform in 2007 seems to have changed the existing social insurance type into the 'Bismarckian Lite' type. However, considering the immaturity of Korean pension regime, it is difficult to conclude the existing status of the Korean pension regime and, the Korean one can be classified into a multi-pillar one. Over the last decades the developed countries have increased the size of private pension regardless of their original pension regimes, which tends to converge into multi-pillar schemes. Accordingly, there is recently a new typology focused on the degree of regulation in terms of private pensions, which seems to be the better perspective. It will be more important how to regulate the (immature) occupational pension as well as the National Pension in Korea. Considering that old age income security in countries where the public regulation regarding private pension was absent has been deteriorated, it would be necessary to strengthen the role of government to effectively regulate private pension.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.1-39
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• 2019

This paper utilizes a life-cycle overlapping-generations model to quantify the welfare effects of plans to postpone the depletion of the National Pension Fund. In order for the model to incorporate the rapidly changing demographic structure of Korea fully, we build and calibrate a model in transition directly. The model is considered suitable for analyzing the effects of demographic changes on the Korean economy and the effects of plans to change the National Pension System. According to a simulation of the model, to postpone the depletion of the National Pension Fund for 30 years, the premium rate must be increased to 18.3% from the current rate of 9%. By postponing the depletion of the fund reserve, young and future generations gain significantly at the expense of the older generations. The simulation results should be, however, interpreted as meaning that the current system is unjustifiably partial to the older generations. Moreover, given the current premium rate, it is desirable to strengthen the income-redistribution function of the National Pension System.