This paper examines the effect of active labor market policy on the unemployment rates in 8 welfare states. This paper focuses on the following questions: what are the major predictors of the changes in unemployment rates?; and what is the effect of active labor market policy in reducing unemployment rates? Using the data from Comparative Welfare States Data Set by Stephens (1997), Key Indicators of the Labour Market by ILO (1999) and Social Expenditure Database by OECD (1999), this paper attempts to answer the above research questions. Fuller-Battese model, a data analysis method in pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, is adopted to identify variables predicting changes in unemployment rates. This paper analyzes the predictors by using 3 analysis models about 2 types of unemployment (overall unemployment and long term unemployment). Results are as follows: (1) economic variable such as changes in GDP has a positive effect in reducing unemployment rates; (2) active labor market policy has a positive effect in reducing unemployment rates as well; (3) job brokering service among 3 major active labor market programs has a positive effect in reducing unemployment rates; and (4) there is an interaction effect between unemployment benefit level and active labor market policy in reducing unemployment rates. Through the empirical analysis, this paper provides valuable knowledge about effects of active labor market policy on unemployment in 8 welfare states and discusses implications for the active labor market policy in Korea.

The purpose of this study is to examine the residents' life style affected by community-oriented behavior, and to assess the implication of changes in communities and in the participants' sense of community resulted from the Community Currency Movement in Korea. 4 Community Currency organizations were selected for this study and some methodologies such as field research, survey of actual conditions and depth interview research were used, By using of this methodology. We can analyze the characteristics of Community Currency Movement in Korea and the degree of participants' sense of community. As a result of this study, it was found that the residents recognized 'new' community and felt 'a sense of belonging' by exchanging the community currency. They have also expanded 'a sense of responsibility' for the community through the exchange of this currency. Along with this change of attitude, participants have made a new community norms and they have been more or less controled by the norm. Moreover, the emotional satisfaction and the needs for improving self-esteem have been realized within the community, and the intimacy as well as solidarity have been built up and enhanced. In conclusion, the Community Currency Movement gives a significant implication to the communities that seek to solve the community problems of the contemporary society through the communal effort by the residents themselves. Furthermore, in terms of community welfare, this process will be of an immense help in reinforcing self-help ability of the residents effectively.

Despite the rapid expansion of social security coverage in the 1990s, many wage earners in Korea, especially the majority of the nonstandard workforce are excluded in the social insurance programs. In this regards, the purpose of this paper is to analyze causes of the exclusion of nonstandard workers to the social insurance scheme and to suggest the feasible policy options. Through this paper, four arguments are addressed as follows. First, the main issue for exclusion from coverage of those workers is that they have no entitlement to social insurance. This is not an issue of that they fall below hours or income thresholds for the entitlement Second, the top-down process of the extension in the Korean social insurances have divided the wage earners into two groups, the insider (the included) and the outsider (the excluded). Many nonstandard workers belong to the latter category. Third, the social insurance systems have been designed for the regular workers who were characterized by a full-time with some degree of stability. Reform designed to cope with the growth of nonstandard workers must build on the existing structure of social insurance. Finally, the governance capacity by social security administration body must be improved in order to provide a basic social protection for those workers. For that, four separated social insurance administration bodies could be unified to one administrative body, or tax and contribution of social insurance could be collected by one integrated administration body, the National Tax Service.

In this study, we examine the marital factors which relate to the child abuse. We mainly analyze the influence of the satisfaction of couple life, communication on battering child, and we also test mediating effect of the level of parents' stress. The major outcomes of the study are following. In case of father, the satisfaction of couple life, communication don't have a significant influence on battering child. And they have a significant influence on the level of fathers' stress. But the level of fathers' stress does not influence on battering child. In case of mother, the satisfaction of couple life and communication don't explain the child abuse. But they have a significant influence on level of mothers' stress, and it also have a significant influence on battering child. These findings show that family therapy or marital therapy which focuses on enhancing the satisfaction of couple life and improving the way of communication between husband and wife is needed to reduce the child abuse. To the mothers, a stress management program can also be effective.

It has been 5 years since evaluation systems were introduced to the social welfare field in Korea. More than half of social welfare agencies (617 out of 1,267) were evaluated in the past two years. Most areas of the agencies were the target of an extensive evaluation in 2000. As "the Evaluation Era" has come, problems were raised especially regarding the Accreditation system of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. More specifically, the problems were related to operation and management of the evaluation systems including the issue of evaluators' objectivity and fairness. In addition, evaluation costs have been too high to the government. The evaluation systems of OECD nations including the United States were quite different. These nations have used the Performance Measurement in order to secure the objectivity and the fairness. Although the quantity of information was limited compared to that of the Accreditation system, these nations have taken the lead in the governmental evaluation. In this context, this study compared social welfare evaluation systems between Korea and the United States. It presented the current status and problems of the Accreditation system of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, discussed the American Performance Measurement and its limitations, and compared the strengths and weaknesses of the two evaluation systems. In addition, this study suggested the strategies of Korean evaluation systems in the long term as well as in the short term.

This study was designed to look at the relationships between parental child-rearing behavior and personality traits and run-away behavior of youths. For the purpose, this study compared 156 youth from the juvenile correctional systems, and 146 youths from high-schools. The additional focus was to find personality differences between runway youths and non-runway youths, and the effects of parental child-rearing behavior. The findings were as follows; First, high caring and low overprotection, among parental child-rearing behavior, was found to have effects upon adolescents with positive personality factors, whereas parental low caring and high overprotection effected upon negative personality factors among youths. Second, in relationship between runaway behavior and personality factors, it was found that youths with positive meaning in personality factors turned out to be less likely to run away from home, whereas those with negative meaning in 16PF were more likely to run away. Lastly, adolescents in high caring and low overprotection state with parents, proved to have high scores in personality factors, and low probability in runaway behavior.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of social exclusion and underclass and to find out their implication for the poverty policy in Korea. Social exclusion as a concept, on the other hand, offers a broader perspective in addressing multi-dimensional disadvantage, especially in relation to social policy. The term underclass offers a convenient metaphor for use in commentaries on inner city crises because it evokes three widely shared perceptions: novelty, complexity, and danger. Conditions within inner cities are unprecedented; they cannot be reduced to a single factor; and they menace the rest of us. Open debate on the underclass accelerated in 1977 when Time magazine announced the emergence of a menacing underclass in America's inner cities. Drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy, and high unemployment, not poverty, defined the 'underclass,' most of whose members were young and minorities. With the publication in 1982 of Ken Auletta's Underclass, the word secured it dominance in the vocabulary of inner-city pathology. As implications for Korean poverty policy of the concept of social exclusion and underclass, the establishment of multi-dimensional concept of poverty, development of multi-dimensional approach of social work, improvement of National Basic Life Guarantee System, research on employment policy in social welfare field, and research on housing policy for the poor were suggested.

In order to understand the provision of social welfare in Korea, this study puts forward a method to measure and tracks the welfare mix, and applies the method to Korea. This is the goal of this study, which is in three parts. First, I critically review the concept of welfare pluralism and develop the welfare mix model, Second, I present a methodology and technique for measuring and systematically comparing the components of the welfare mix. Third, I examine the roles of five welfare providers including state, market, non-profit organization, enterprise and family in the welfare mix of Korea. This study argues that the welfare mix in Korea has some characteristics of 'residual state, expanded market, negligible voluntary sector, and protective family'. The state in Korea has played a relatively little role in the provision of social welfare, enforcing most Koreans being with a meagre social protection. Thus, most of the 'left' needs for social welfare has to be met in the private sector composed of market and enterprises. In addition, in a situation that self/mutual help through family or community is encouraged, the family has played an important role in the welfare mix. But the role of voluntary sector in the welfare mix has remained negligible. Consequently, the characteristics of the welfare mix in Korea can be best described by a welfare society rather than a welfare state.

This study concerns therapeutic effects and long-term effects of Therapy Dog Assisted Program (TDAP) on autistic children. Subjects participating in this study are two groups of Korean elementary school boys of the same age (twelve years old) : an experimental group and a controlled group of equal number of children (six children in total). The thirteen different sessions of the first intervention and eight different sessions of the second intervention were performed over six months (from April 20th to October 27th, 2000). Two standard instrument (ASIEP, E-CLAC) are used as major instruments in order to evaluate the effectiveness of TDAP. Evidene from the present study indicates that the children participating in TDAP program achieved a greater degree of improvement in their social interaction in comparison with the counterpart. The present study also demonstrates that, in general, the effectiveness of TDAP somewhat decreased after the termination of TDAP with some exceptions. However we also found that the effectiveness of TDAP were maintained in the some behavioral area such as bowing to teacher, play for cooperation with peers, which activities were sufficiently offered TDAP to the children. The questions of possible influence of parental support and other family background of each individual autistic child on the effect and long-term effect of TDAP need to be addressed in future study.

The purpose of this study is to examine the strategies that may influence the marital satisfaction of dual-earner men and women. General linear model, Pearson's correlation analysis, Stepwise multiple regression were employed for data analysis. the subjects are 396 dual-earner men and women. The result from the research were as follows: 1) coping strategy use differs significantly by life cycle stage. 2) The following strategies significantly correlated with the level of marital satisfaction: cognitive restructuring, delegation. using social support, modifying standards, personal time reducing. 3) The result of stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that strategies which predict the level of marital satisfaction were cognitive restructuring, delegating, using social support, personal time reducing. these finding give us significant practical implications for social work intervention.

The purpose of study is to examine the effects of family support on the life satisfaction of elderly with disabilities and provide a ground necessary to improve it. Research was conducted on 167 elderly with hearing, visual and physical disabilities aged over 60 who were living in Seoul and Pusan. Telephone survey, sign language and interview, in accordance with types of disability, were adopted to collect data effectively. That is telephone survey was used for elderly with visual impairment whereas face-to-face interview for physical impairment and sign language for hearing impairment by volunteers. Collected data were analyzed, using hierarchical regression analysis. This study utilized two different models, direct effect model and buffering effect of social support in order to examine the effects of familial support on the life satisfaction of elderly with disabilities. Research findings suggest that the level of life satisfaction appeared to be low in general among elderly with disabilities and emotional family support exerted a positive effect on life satisfaction. In addition, it is empirically supported that emotional family support buffered the negative effect of economic limitations on life satisfaction. In other words, the effects of economic limitations as stress factor decreased with the increase in the frequency of emotional support, however, the level of life satisfaction decreased at a mercy of the stress factor of economic limitations with the decrease in the frequency of emotional support. Finally, this paper attempted to provide some alternatives to effectively improve life satisfaction among elderly with disabilities based on empirical findings.

This study seeks to identify the reform of vocational education plans so as to bring about a seamless transition from school to work. It puts forward a number of suggestions based upon an analysis of vocational education policies in Korean and U.S. schools, concerning the government's role, partnerships between education and industry, the educational system, curriculum and work-based learning. First, not only government initiatives but also close partnerships between education and industry are essential to help vocational education in school the transition to employment. Education and industry should work closely together to standardize certificate related skills and to have these skills reflected in the curriculum. Also the government should strive to provide guidelines for work-based learning and formulate standards for supervision and evaluation. Second, to facilitate the school to work transition, comprehensive schools should be promoted so that students have access to a greater ranger of vocational education. At the same time, an assessment system that certifies a mastering of the basic skills of those who undergo the education should be introduced, and it should be related to earn these certificates. Third, standardized vocational skills should be included in the curriculum so that students can acquire skills that are useful for industry. All the students in vocational and general high schools should have access both to general education, the foundation for lifelong learning and for employ ability, and to basic occupational skills which empower students in dealing with rapid changes of technology. Also a range of specialized vocational curricula should be offered so that students can opt for more specialized occupations; and they can select careers appropriate to their capability. Fourth, so that all students to have the opportunity to take part in work-based education, which is closely related to employment, various work-based learning programs should be offered to meet the needs of students and their educational conditions. Companies should for their part train students thoroughly in accordance with the standards of work-based education. In addition, supervisors should be stationed both in schools and companies in order to administer the students' work-based learning.

Experiences of the subjective burden and its determinants were analyzed in a sample of 110 primary family caregivers of adult schizophrenic patients. The subjects reported varying amount of subjective burden and its mean score was 17.84 that meant considerably high level of subjective burden. Reports of subjective burden were high in the items of 'pity', 'frustration and resentment', 'regret'. The result of factor analysis revealed that subjective burden consisted of four factors such as 'hopelessness', 'frustration and resentment', 'fear', and 'pity and anxiety'. The results about the determining variables of subjective burden indicated that the prognosis of patient, perceived stigma, the number of previous hospitalization, the availability of secondary caregiver, primary caregiver's age, and family income were predictive of primary caregivers' subjective burden. The result examining the multivariate relationship among subjective burden, stressors, social support, family demographic and socioeconomic characteristics revealed that the more important determinants of subjective burden were the prognosis of patient, perceived stigma, and the number of previous hospitalization, Implications for intervention to help with primary caregivers' subjective burden were discussed.