• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.49-64
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• 2022

This study aims to investigate unmet healthcare needs due to economic or non-economic difficulties among the elderly aged 65 or older. Using Korea Health Panel Survey (KHPS) data from 2018, the elderly are classified into one of four groups (health insurance subscribers, non-take-up, lower income relief, and medical aid recipients) based on their level of medical vulnerability. For hospital or dental care, the prevalence rates of unmet healthcare needs due to economic and non-economic difficulties are 12.6% and 10.6%, respectively. The prevalence rate of unmet healthcare needs due to economic difficulty in the medically vulnerable group was much higher than that of the non-vulnerable group-that is, health insurance subscribers. After controlling for other influential factors, medical vulnerability has a great impact on the prevalence rates of unmet healthcare needs due to economic difficulties. Compared to health insurance subscribers, the non-take-up, the lower relief, and the medical aid recipients are 1.4 times, 3.3 times, and 2.4 times more likely to experience unmet healthcare needs due to economic difficulty, respectively. The results of this study can provide important policy implications for securing essential healthcare resources for the elderly.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.233-265
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• 2011

Material hardship measures have been used to supplement the traditional income-based poverty measures. Recently poverty researchers have increasingly used measure of material hardship to examine the well-being of low income families. Measuring the material hardship might be useful to a better understanding of the multi-dimensions of the poverty in Korea. Using the data of the Korea Welfare Panel Study(the fourth wave), I examine incidences of material hardship across quintiles of the income distributions and the factors that might affect the experience of material hardship among the poor families. Major findings are as follows. Descriptive results show that nearly one-fifth of all families had experienced at least one of the five material hardships in the year. Those in the bottom quintiles and the poor families are more likely to experience material hardship than the other quintiles and non-poor families. But, incidences of the material hardship in the middle income quintiles and low income families are not a few(18 percent and 37 percent). Logistic regression results show that family-consumption related variables, income other economic resources(asset and public assistance), and household's employment status affect the experience of material hardship among the poor families. But, material hardship among the poor families is not significantly related with family income. These results indicate that material hardship measures are the useful indicators to understanding the multi-dimensions of the poverty in Korea. And they suggest that an extensive reform of the public assistance policy is necessary to relieve the material hardships of the poor in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.66 no.1
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• pp.61-85
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• 2014

Lately, as the problem of the aged poverty becomes a big social issue, this paper studies the problem of financial stability with respect to the income and consumption of before-and-after retirement generations. After dividing the data in Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing(KLoSA) into retired and non-retired groups, this study compares the difference among ageing groups by cross analysis and t-test. First, the result tells that the total personal income of retired group is lower than the one of non-retired group. Second, the public pension income benefit ratio of retired group is only 30% of it's total income, and the amount of public pension appears to be 40% of the total pension income. The benefit ratio of the personal pension income is low as about 1% in both groups, The private transfer income of the retired group takes relatively large portion in its total personal income. Third, as people gets older, financial stability gets worse because consumption does not decrease as much as the income decreases. Fourth, it is turned out that the expectation of old life supporting from nation is low in both groups. Fifth, the factors that affects the income of the public pension in the retired group are gender, age, education, and health status, when compared with the factors to the personal total income of the non-retired group. In terms of policy, this paper emphasizes the needs of the intensification of the public pension and the support for the revitalization of the personal pension.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• no.37
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• pp.171-197
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• 2008

This study focuses on the following question; self-supporting training program increases participants' income compare to non-participants who have similar characteristics. This question is based on counterfactual assumption. In other words, this study concentrates on what the outcomes would have been if the participants were to be absent. This study adopts a quasi-experimental design. To overcome previous study's methodological weaknesses, especially selection bias, I applied matching procedure based on a propensity-score matching. Matching process was performed by using 'MatchIt' software. The major findings are as follows From Least Squares Regression analysis, I found the poor's income are significantly different according to age, pre-intervention earning, material status, and participation of training. Since the poor have homogeneous education level, education variable was not statistically significant. From the Simulation Quantities of Interest analysis, I also found that treatment group's expected incomes are lower than control's expected incomes. In other words, participation of training has a negative effect on the participants' earnings.