• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.401-409
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors influencing the regional differences and the denture use behavior after the elderly denture health insurance benefits for the elderly over 65 years old in Seoul and Gangwon provinces. The data was used in the "2015 Community Health Survey". The results of the study are as follows; 1) There is a significant difference in denture use among elderly in Seoul and elderly in Gangwon area. 2) There is significant differences in denture use among the elderly in the Gangwon area. According to the age, household income, basic living conditions, occupation, education level and subjective oral health, There is significant differences in all of 2 areas. 3) Some 16.6% of the elderly in Seoul and some 22.3% of the elderly in Gangwon province answered 'yes'. The reasons for not having the required dental care were the most economical reasons in all of 2 areas. Therefore, the elderly denture health insurance benefit project considering various aspects is necessary.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.31-54
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• 2011

This study investigates the nature of the welfare state under the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun regime focusing on participatory democracy in the policy decision making procedure for the National Health Insurance. Participatory democracy was introduced not for the qualitative development of Korean democracy but for securing political legitimacy to change the Korean economic structure after the IMF financial crisis. Although participatory democracy played the positive role in winning higher benefit level in National Health Insurance. an index for the development of the welfare state, in 2007 A policy of higher benefit level ended in failure because of the pursuit of the neoliberal ideology, lack of government's responsibility for public finance, and thwarting policy holders' substantial participation in the decision-making process. Like those of past welfare systems, participatory democracy under the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun regime was introduced for securing political legitimacy. But it was managed under restrictions imposed by pro-economic-growth ideology. Nevertheless, the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun governments are different from the former welfare states because of the fact that participatory democracy system is not 'service' system but 'political structure' and the fact that the grant of powers by participatory democracy played positive roles in the development of welfare state through request of higher benefit level policy.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.221-262
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• 2018

This study aims to explore life experiences associated with poverty and discrimination in processes of growth, career exploration, entry into the labor market, and career accumulation of the working high school graduate youths. With this exploration, we also intent to grasp their difficulties and needs, thus look for policy tasks for them. The analysis is based on qualitative case study. The results are following. Typical working high school graduate youths choose not to go on to university under the influence of unfavorable economic situation of the original families. They enter the labor market without enough career exploration and try to continue working mainly in low-income and unskilled jobs. They usually work long hours to increase incomes, thus, do not have enough time to invest on their own human resources. They locate in a vicious circle of income poverty, time poverty, and skill poverty, but rarely protected by existing employment and income support programs. It is necessary to improve or introduces policy packages including labor market transition support for the high school graduate, education, training, and career exploration support, income support for the working poor, social network support, and support for reducing the dead zone of social insurances.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.546-558
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• 2019

Health inequality means health gaps that can be affected adverse effects to the vulnerable groups in a society. Many scholars argue that it is needed social interventions to reduce health gaps between the vulnerable and the privileged in a society, because social inequalities can be caused and resulted health inequality among them. In this context, this article introduces Korean out of school children health check-up as part of the policies to reduce health inequality in the society. For a long time, many out of school children have been alienated from the national health checkup systems. That means they are not only marginalized groups in Korean society, but also excluded from the benefits of health promotion and health management. Many runaway youths are struggling to live by themselves, who are escaped from their families and they don't have enough resources to keep their health. They are also young and low waged workers who are expelled to the streets, while they don't have any support and protection from the communities. Out of school children health checkup has been conducted to the adolescents who stay in the shelters or study in alternative schools. To get meaningful results as the health inequality reduction policy, it is needed to expand out of children health checkup to the runaway teenagers.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.76-89
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze factors affecting a grade maintenance of long-term care service users. Using 2008-2014 long-term care raw data of National Health Insurance Service(NHIS), the predictors were examined through the logistic regression by long-term care beneficiaries of grade. The results showed that there are differences by 3 factor groups and grade groups(1-3 grade). In socio-demographic factors, in the 1, 3 grade, Individuals 64 or younger presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than those 85 and over. In the 3 grade, people of living alone, resident of rural area presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than others. In disease factors, In the 1 grade, people with dementia presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than other 2, 3grades. In the 2 grade, people with stroke, fracture presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than others. In the 3 grade, people with cancer presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than others. In service factors, In the 2, 3grade, people having more renewal numbers presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than others. In the 1 grade, people who use facility benefits for more days presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than others. In the 2 grade, people who use in-home benefits for more days presented a much higher probabilities of the grade maintenance than others. Based on the finding of study, implications and future research directions were discussed for policy considerations.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.55
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• pp.155-179
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• 2003

This paper compares two indicators, economic development and social condition, to find a better way to measure the level of social welfare development. The results show that social condition is more adequate indicator than economic development. The social condition has high correlation with the development of social welfare in all the 78 countries as well as in five groups of countries when the economic development is controlled. The comparison of two indicators reveals important findings. Among other things, the higher the level of social condition compared with economic development, the larger the social welfare expenditure. This tendency is particularly strong among the western European countries and former socialist countries. This result implies that the macro-level policy of social redistribution is also important for the development of social welfare in addition to micro-level policy of income redistribution. As we expected, the results show that the level of Korean social welfare development is very low. Considering our levels of economic development and social condition, predicted social welfare expenditure from regression model is at least 17% of GDP, but we are spending only 30% of this predicted expenditure. Another serious problem in Korean social welfare is unbalanced expenditure between social insurance and public assistance. On the basis of these results, this paper suggests three implications for social policy to improve Korean social welfare: First of all, the gap between predicted and actual expenditures should be closed to improve the minimum level of social welfare. Secondly, the level of social condition itself should be improved to increase the public awareness of social welfare. Finally, the wide difference in expenditure between universal and selective social welfare programs should also be removed to decrease the relative deprivation of the poor.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.469-482
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to analyze regional variation factors of hypertension treatment rate in COVID-19 based on the analysis results based on ecological methodology. To this end, data suitable for ecological analysis were collected from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's regional health statistics, local government COVID-19 confirmed cases, National Health Insurance Corporation, Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service's welfare statistics, and Korea Transport Institute's traffic access index. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were conducted using SPSS Statistics 23 for regional variation and related factors in hypertension treatment rate, and geographical weighted regression analysis was conducted using Arc GIS for regional variation factors. As a result of the study, the overall explanatory power of the calculated geo-weighted regression model was 27.6%, distributed from 23.1% to 33.4% by region. As factors affecting the treatment rate of hypertension, the higher the rate of basic living security medical benefits, diabetes treatment rate, and health institutions per 100,000 population, the higher the rate of hypertension treatment, the lower the number of COVID-19 confirmed patients, the lower the rate of physical activity, and the alcohol consumption. Percentage of alcohol consumption decreased due to COVID-19 pandemic. It was analyzed that the lower the ratio, the higher the treatment rate for hypertension. Based on these results, the analysis of regional variables in the treatment rate of hypertension in COVID-19 can be expected to be effective in managing the treatment rate of hypertension, and furthermore, it is expected to be used to establish community-centered health promotion policies.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.5-30
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• 2005

Globalization has conflicting effects on pharmaceutical policies. A change into a 'populist competitive nation' due to globalization strengthens policies to reduce drug manufacturing costs while the WTO's TRIPS Agreement that is affected by multinational pharmaceutical companies increases drug manufacturing costs by bolstering the patent rights on new drugs. Currently, the independency of populist nations' policies to reduce drug manufacturing cost is being compromised because multinational organizations(such as the European Union) which represents the interests of the multinational pharmaceutical companies put restrictions on the pharmaceutical policies of populist nations for purposes of promoting the industrial goals of the multinational companies. Korea is no exception. Up until the late 1990s, the main feature of the pharmaceutical policies in Korea was keeping the drug price at the cost level based on a growth-driven ideology, and this was Korea's unique policy tools as a developing nation. However, the increase in the power of multinational pharmaceutical companies currently infringes on the independency of Korea's pharmaceutical policies. Expensive imported drugs were originally covered by the national health insurance plan, but starting from 1999 such drugs began to be covered by the plan. After separation of medical and pharmaceutical services, the use of expensive drugs was increased, and the Korean government planned to introduce the reference price policy in order to contain the cost of the national health insurance plan. However, due to pressures from the U.S. government as well as multinational pharmaceutical companies, implementation of the policy has been postponed. In addition, due to a pressure from the U.S. government, a working group was created which would affect the health care policy of the Korean government. Discussions so far on globalization was about whether the change into populist competitive nations due to globalization resulted in the reduction of welfare spending. However, this study shows not only the reduction of health care cost through policies to reduce drug manufacturing costs but increase in welfare spending by raising the strengths of multinational pharmaceutical companies that are for-profit providers of welfare service. While focusing on the contradictory effects of globalization on pharmaceutical policies of a nation, this study looked at how these conflicting effects end up promoting the interests of multinational pharmaceutical companies by examining the Korean case.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.421-450
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• 2013

One of the challenging tasks of the National Health Insurance Corporation(NHIC). the only public insurance institution administrating the Korea's compulsory national health insurance(NHI) system, is to make those NHI beneficiaries who fail to make a scheduled monthly premium payment to pay. For this purpose, the NHIC has been using a measure known as 'Benefit Limit Measure(BLM)' in which those who miss premium payment for six or more month's in total are classified as 'late payer' and are sent warnings and late payer status notices. If the late payers fail to make a full payment of missed premiums even after receiving the written notices, the NHIC can order a temporary seizure of the late payer's property until all missed premiums plus interest are paid. Recently, the BLM has been criticized by the public of its cruel nature, and its effectiveness has been questioned because no empirical evidence has been collected. In this study, the authors using the NHIC data set attempted to analyze the effectiveness of the BLM. Those late payers for whom the BLM was administered were compared to those not in terms of the likelihood of paying missed premium payments with a series of logistic regression analyses models. Data analyses results showed that the likelihood of paying one or more month's unpaid premium of the former group was 14 to 46 times higher than the latter. It, however, was also found that the BLM was only effective to make no more than 12% of the late payers to pay at all. Based on the study findings, the authors made a few recommendations regarding the BLM.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.3-35
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• 2018

This article critically reviews the arguments that deny the financial feasbility and effectiveness of universal basic income as an alternative to existing social security systems and makes some suggestions to design effective and efficient basic income schemes. Regarding the financial feasibility of universal basic income, I argue that replacement of the existing regressive tax expenditures with universal basic income without raising tax rates can effectively reduce tax burden or provide income support to a majority of people except the rich. Addition of basic income to the tax base and reduction of the number of beneficiaries of public assistance and the amount of cash payment for them can further help save money. Regarding the redistributive effect, I note that the targeting ability of the existing social security systems is not good and that "the paradox of redistribution" that universal-type programs tend to be more redistributive than selective programs applies to universal basic income as well. I demonstrate significant redistributive effect of a hypothetical revenue-neutral basic income scheme and reviews several empirical studies done in Korea and abroad to show that basic income can be more effective in redistribution than social insurances or public assistance programs. Lastly, I emphasize the need to construct a reliable tax-benefit microsimulation model to help researchers to study redistributive effects of basic income schemes and other taxes and social policies.