• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.365-383
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• 2013

This article stands at the junction of two usually separate fields of study: the politics of International Commerce and Consumer welfare. Conception of welfare state and Welfare society is different depending of the scholars in each country. This paper examines the consumer welfare level of import products in FTA countries. The results shows that FTA country products reaches the same welfare level in sexually, age and job. This paper contributes to this issue by considering consumers that incur consumer welfare level with import products costs.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.36
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• pp.5-28
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to review recent trends and major emerging problems and explore alternatives of Korean social welfare service policies. The concerns on social welfare service are triggered by the issues of rapid getting lower birth rate and severe growing rate of old people. These concerns resulted in the expansions of social welfare services. But Korean social welfare service systems are not prepared for these expansions. Presenting problems are disconnection between state and local governments, not securing minimum standards on accessibility and service provision, excessive concerns on making caring jobs and lacking in securing of safety and rights of vulnerable service users. As alternatives, this study proposes the integration of market approaches which can facilitate service user's choice and anti-market schemes which could act against the negative effects of market approaches.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.48
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• pp.7-41
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• 2002

This paper analyses the proposals contained in the British Government Green Paper, A New Contract for Welfare: Partnership in Pensions for low paid workers and the potential of the new rules to guarantee a decent income in old age. The UK pension system is a partnership between the State(providing the basic state pension and the SERPS), employers(providing occupational pension scheme) and private pension providers(providing personal pensions). Although the system needs to change, this partnership remains the right foundation. However, the pension Green Paper proposes substantial changes to second tier pension provision in the UK. In particular, the Government plans to replace the SERPS with a new State Second Pension. According to the Green Paper, this will result in "dramatically better pension provision for those earning less than ${\pounds}9,000$ a year" and through increased payments to private pension schemes, will also provide "extra help to those on middle incomes(${\pounds}9,000-{\pounds}18,500$ a year). Therefore, it discusses the general principles inherent in the design of the British pension system and analyses the balance of these principles is represented in the Green Paper. The paper then examines how the Government's proposals protect individuals from a means-tested old age. This paper finds that the Green paper's proposals add up to reinventing a new two-stage basic pension. However, two key features of a such a basic pension package are missing- an 'adequate' level of payment and comprehensive entitlement. Because of these missing principles we argue that the Green Paper's proposals incorporate for the low paid. The income from the basic pension and the secondary pension which is so near the means-tested minimum that little is gained in retirement from a lifetime of work and contribution. Indeed, the shift away from collective provision and the emphasis on individual responsibility will reinforce this inequality, so that many poor will continue to experience poverty in later life.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.39
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• pp.189-219
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• 2008

The purpose of this article is to examine the dynamics of pension insurance policy-making and policy outputs under the developmental state of Korea, by analysing the first attempt to establish the national pension scheme in the early 1970s. To the aim, this article formulated the comprehensive analytical framework from the viewpoint of process-oriented perspective, linking policy-making dynamics with the policy context as an external constraint and policy output as a result of policy-making. Policy context was explored in terms of three variables of politics, civil society and economy, whilst policy-making and policy network dynamics were examined by employing the following variables: i) initiators, motivation and triggering devices, ii) number of participants and key players, iii) participants' interests, iv) major conflicting parties and key differences of allegation, and v) interactions between participants. Policy outputs were analysed by looking into the mainly reflected interests and the change of intended policies.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.213-239
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• 2010

The purpose of this research is to explore the explanatory factors of preference for the universality of the welfare system at the time of expanding the welfare system. In particular, considering endogenous problem that may occur in the process of analyzing the causal relationship between subjective perception and preference for welfare policy, the 2SLS regression analysis using instrument variables was attempted in this research. The key findings of this research were as follow. First, the groups who are opposed to the welfare state expansion, for example high income earners, low risk group, and employer/self-employer, prefer the more universal welfare systems. Second, the negative perception of welfare policy and recipients, which is stronger in older generation who experienced a much longer period of industrializaion, have a negative effect on preference for the universal welfare system. Last, we find that the endogenous problem arise in this research and distort the estimated regression coefficients. Therefore, subsequent studies must be mindful of this problem when they explain attitudes with attitudes.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.36
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• pp.55-80
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• 2008

Research on the welfare state or income inequality has been concerned with variations in inequality between societies or families. These studies tend to view the family as a unit of shared interests where incomes are pooled and distributed equally. This study makes a theoretical and empirical case for why it is important to look at economic dependency within the family in comparative welfare state research. Using the Luxembourg Income Study data this study examined married women's dependency on their husbands' earnings in 16 western industrialized countries. The constructed measure for married women's level of economic dependency followed the procedure of Sørensen & McLanahan(1987), which stated : "her dependency is measured by the extent to which a woman's standard of living(as determined by her share of income) is derived from a transfer from her husband." The finding suggested that married women's economic dependence was lowest in Scandinavian countries. On the contrary, in Southern Europe countries most married women were dependent on husbands' earnings. In Netherlands, Austria, Germany where the share of part-time work among married women was high, married women's economic dependence was also high. This showed the women's labor force participation did not mean that the majority of couples were equal with respect to earnings, nor that a major shift in the sexual division of labour has taken place. This paper analysed the causal relationship between the married women's economic independence and the welfare state by using Ragin(2000)'s Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. This analysis considered the various conditions of the welfare state : namely, left power, union mobilization density, women's mobilization, public service sector employment and generous support on the family. The result showed that powerful union, high level of women's mobilization and the generous support on the family were necessary conditions for 'relatively high' level of married women's economic independence.

• 한국사회복지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.147-177
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• 2002

• 한국사회복지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.35-47
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• 2007

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.51-69
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• 1995

The Swedish welfare state has been the model for others to emulate the archetypical example of state intervention. The state interventions are presented in the form of legal acts. These social welfare acts can be classified according to the demographic transition theory. According to the Bogue's theory, the demographic transition in Sweden took place in four stages : the pre-transitional stage before 1810; the early transitional stage from 1810 to 1860; the mid-transitional stage from 1860 to 1930; the late transitional stage from 1930 to now. As we look into the social welfare acts in Sweden, the relief of the poor was the major concern of the early transitional stage, the care of workers was the major concerns of the mid-transitional stage and the care of the families was the major concerns in the late transitional stage. The Korea's transition period can be devided as follows; the pre-transitional stage before 1960; the early transitional stage from 1960 to 1969; the mid-transitional stage from 1970 to 1987; and the late transitional stage from 1987 to now. In Korea, the major concern of the early transitional stage was the care of the officials and the workers; in the mid-transitional stage the care of the aged and the handicapped were the major concerns. And in the late transitional stage the expanding of the welfare clients was the major concern. If we compare the results of both countries, the relief of the poor, the care of the workers and the care of the families will be the major concerns in Korea, because the social welfare acts in Korea are extended to specific groups and not to the whole population. The acts related to these social issues have been arranged in 120 years in Sweden. But Korea had to do the same work in 27 years. So the burden of making those social acts will be four times heavier. If we want to extend the benefits of the social system to the general population, we need to look at the design and approach of the swedish model. The reason why swedish social acts constitute an international model has more to do with the uniqueness of its design and approach. First of all, it is characteristic by its universalism, secondly by its emphasis on social services and thirdly by its productivitism. Also the swedish welfare state supported by a high-tax system called the earnings-related welfare system. In order to achieve an effective welfare state, we Koreans should pay attention to the relief of the poor, the care of the worker and the families. We should also focus on a good system design and prepare appropriate budgets.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.53
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• pp.311-336
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• 2003

This paper purports to explain the conflicts and compromises between supra-national authority and national welfare state in an era of globalization. For this purpose this paper, first of all, examines if Community law(EU) is directly applicable to member states(direct applicability), and subsequently, if Community law is superior to national law(supremacy). It duly claims that Community law is de facto applicable to member states and thus is superior to national law, but de jure the direct applicability and supremacy of Community law are still ambiguous in practice. Secondly, it briefly describes the development of EU social policy from 'The Rome Treaty(1957)' to 'The Amsterdam Treaty(1997)', and ascertains clear limitations of social dimension of EU. Thirdly, it explains why CEU(Commission of European Union) sequently fails to achieve uniform harmonization policy in the making of social Europe. This paper concludes that 'downward harmonization thesis' or 'convergence thesis' which commonly stresses that globalization seriously impinges on nation-state's policy autonomy and policy capacity is not evidenced at least in the case of EU social policy.