• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.384-392
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• 2019

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the health inequality discourse in the Korean press by analyzing newspaper articles using a relatively new content analysis technique. Methods: This study used the search term "health inequality" to collect articles containing that term that were published between 2000 and 2018. The collected articles went through pre-processing and topic modeling, and the contents and temporal trends of the extracted topics were analyzed. Results: A total of 1038 articles were identified, and 5 topics were extracted. As the number of studies on health inequality has increased over the past 2 decades, so too has the number of news articles regarding health inequality. The extracted topics were public health policies, social inequalities in health, inequality as a social problem, healthcare policies, and regional health gaps. The total number of occurrences of each topic increased every year, and the trend observed for each theme was influenced by events related to its contents, such as elections. Finally, the frequency of appearance of each topic differed depending on the type of news source. Conclusions: The results of this study can be used as preliminary data for future attempts to address health inequality in Korea. To make addressing health inequality part of the public agenda, the media's perspective and discourse regarding health inequality should be monitored to facilitate further strategic action.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.97-107
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• 2021

Abnormal climate caused by climate change causes enormous social and economic damage. And such damage and its impact may vary depending on the location and regional characteristics of the region and the social and economic conditions of local residents. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously monitor whether there are indicators that are weaker than other regions among the detailed indicators that constitute the risk, exposure and vulnerability of climate change risk. In this study, the concept of climate change risk was used for heatwave to determine regional inequality of climate change risk. In other words, it was judged that inequality in climate change risk occurred in regions with high risk but high exposure and low vulnerability compared to other regions. As a result of the analysis, it was found that 13 local governments in Korea experienced regional inequality in climate change risk. In order to resolve regional inequality in climate change risks, the current status of regional inequality in climate change should be checked based on the analysis proposed in this study, there is a need for an evaluation and monitoring system that can provide appropriate feedback on areas where inequality has occurred. This continuous evaluation and monitoring-based feedback system is expected to be of great help in resolving regional inequality in climate change risks.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.1-45
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• 2017

This study aims at explaining organizational mechanisms of inequality that has been rising rapidly alongside the proliferation of irregular employment in the post-crisis Korean labor market. It argues that inequality is not sufficiently explained by individual gap in human capital or widespread marketization as such. Social categories into which each individual worker falls seems more important as a source of labor market inequality. Employment types that are composed of regular and irregular employment do not simply indicate the different economic meanings of employment contracts but have rather been institutionalized as a social category of status in the context of inequality over the past two decades. They are also often matched with other social categories such as gender that have created and reproduced greater labor market inequality. We pay attention to the organizational practice of dominant incumbents who make claims for advantages of return based on their exclusive accessibility to limited organizational resources and explain how that particular practice plays a role to increase relational inequality between those insiders who achieve advantageous returns and outsiders mostly irregular workers who are excluded from those resources because of the social categories that they belong to. In this study, we identify seniority based pay as the key organizational practice that justifies categorical differences within the workplace and examine how that particular practice contributes to organizational level segmentation and income ineqaulity.

• 한국사회정책
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.157-179
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• 2017

In Korea, 'spoon class discourse' has attracted public attention in the press and among young people, which reflects that mass awareness that the class status structure is clearly rooted in the society becomes widespread. Although income distribution has been improved since late 2000s, it is interesting that Korean people's subjective perception concerning class mobility and social justice has been worsemed. By using the survey data on people's perception of opportunity inequality, this study finds that Korean people have by and large negative subjective awareness regarding socio-economic opportunity inequality, magnitude of opportunity inequality, and achievement by efforts, and that the degree of the negative perception is greater in accordance with the people's subjective identification. The regression analysis reveals that the social status of respondents and their parents(-), experience of discrimination(+), age(-), and high education of college and above (+) have consistent effect over socio-economic opportunity inequality, magnitude of opportunity inequality, and achievement by efforts with statistical significance. More concretely, as people have lower subjective status identification at the time of parent generation and their own generation, as they have the experience of discriminatory misconduct, and as they are young and highly educated, they have negative or pessimistic perception regarding opportuinity inequality. In addition, it is revealed that the unemployed and non-regular workers have significantly negative perception on socio-economic opportunity inequality, magnitude of opportunity inequality, while negative perception on the magnitude of opportunity inequality and achievement by efforts is noticeable among high and middle income households.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.20-31
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore ways to define the concept of health inequality. Methods: The concept analysis process by Walker and Avant was used to clarify the meaning of health inequality. Results: Defining attributes of health inequality included differences in health status between individuals or groups, infringement of fundamental rights to health, unfair use of medical services, and social discrimination. The antecedents of health inequality included differences in demographic characteristics (age, gender, education, occupation, residential location), limitations in accessibility to health care, and social exclusion. Consequences of health inequality were increased costs for medical care, decreased health-related quality of life, and lack of ability to cope with health problems resulting in crisis situations, increases in morbidity and mortality, and shortening of life span. The concept was clarified through presentation of model, borderline, related, and contrary cases. Conclusion: Results of this study can be used to guide the direction of future studies through concept analysis in which conceptual attributes in the context of health inequality are examined. Also, based on the result of this study, development of standardized tools to measure health inequality is recommended as well as development of educational programs to reduce health inequalities.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.64 no.2
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• pp.55-83
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• 2012

Self-employment rate is high in Korean labor market, while the income gap within self-employed is also high. Although, there are very few studies that addressed on the income inequality of self-employed. Thus, this study has measured the earnings inequality of self-employed by generalized entropy indices and decomposed inequality factor and trend. The empirical study is based on Korea Welfare Panel Study wave 1~4. The main result from this analysis is summarized in three points. Firstly, earnings inequality of self-employed is severely high and the earnings polarization within self-employed has become more serious in Korea. Secondly, this study provides the evidence that the main factor of earnings inequality of self-employed is the status of self-employment, education level, age group, workplace scale and industry. Thirdly, the contribution of relative changes in the incomes of the status of self-employment is the largest to the inequality trend. In terms of education level, age group and industry, the increase of inequality within group(pure effect) mainly attributes to the rise of earnings inequality of self-employed and the change effect of group composition contributes to deterioration of inequality.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.333-370
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• 2011

This study views the aged inequalities according to the inequality hypothesis of the life course perspective in OECD 10 countries. Focusing on educational level which is early social status and welfare state regime which is social structure factors of inequality, this study analyzes income inequality for the aged who have transformed into old age period from non-aged period. The analysis is based on the data SHARE of Europe and HRS of USA. The main results of this study are summarized in four points. First, the income inequality is quite high by welfare system and the educational level. Second, the income inequality is somewhat reduced in case the people move from the period of non-aged to the period of aged. However, gini coefficient is still high(0.475). Considering welfare state regimes, although the income inequality is high in conservative regime of non-aged period, this would be higher in aged period. This result supports cumulative advantages/disadvantages hypothesis. The liberal regime remains high income inequality which supports the theoretical argument of status maintenance. Social democratic regime provides evidence to offer some support for the status leveling hypothesis. In there, income inequality is lower in aged period even though income inequality of non-aged period is low. Third, the cumulative advantages/disadvantages of disposable income according to educational level are strengthened and heterogeneity is grown in case people transition from the late period of non-aged to aged period. But public pension has been more equally distributed than gross income. Fourth, seeing welfare state regimes, public pension of aged-period is more inequally distributed than that of non-aged period in liberal and conservative regime. Specially in conservative regime, inequality of gross income is very high and public pension is also inequally distribute So this might show that the social security system strengthens the cumulative advantages/disadvantages. However, in the social democratic regime, public pension is more equally distributed than gross income and it could be much more equally distributed in aged period, which can support the status leveling hypothesis.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.297-317
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• 2007

In this article, I want to demonstrate wage equality increases support for welfare expenditures while the wage equality depends on how labour market institutions are organized. In other words, this study tries to show that there can be institutional complementarity between inequality-reducing labour market institutions and generous social policy. In the first section, I develop a theoretical models which deal(1) how the inequality of income affects the political support for welfare expenditure(2) how the configurations of labour market institutions affect income inequality in the labour market. In the following section, this study tests the models with data on welfare spending, configurations of labour market institutions, and the inequality of wage and salaries in 14 welfare states from 1980 to 1995. Empirical analysis also provides support for key implications of the models. These models and empirical findings may show that the institutional complementarity stems from the interdependence of institutional influences on actors' decision-making. Moreover, this study suggests welfare policy are always considered with labour market institutions.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.165-172
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• 2008

Objectives : Despite various government initiatives, including the expansion of national health insurance coverage, health inequality has been a key health policy issue in South Korea during the past decade. This study describes and compares the extent of the total health inequality and the income-related health inequality over time among Korean adults. Methods : This study employs the 1998, 2001 and 2005 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHANESs). The self-assessed health (SAH) ordinal responses, measured on a five-point scale, resealed to cardinal values to measure the health inequalities with using interval regression. The boundaries of each threshold for the interval regression analysis were obtained from the empirical distribution of the EuroQol-5 Dimension (EQ-5D) valuation weights estimated from the 2005 KNHANES. The final model predicting the individuals' health status included age, gender, educational attainment, occupation, income, and the regional prosperity index. The concentration index was used to measure and analyze the health inequality. Results : The KNHANES data showed an unequal distribution of the total health inequality in favor of the higher income groups, and this is getting worse over time (0.0327 in 1998, 0.0393 in 2001 and 0.0924 in 2005). The income-related health inequality in 2005 was 0.0278, indicating that 30.1% of the total health inequality can be attributed to income. Conclusions : The findings indicate there are health inequalities across the sociodemographic and income groups despite the recent government's efforts. Further research is warranted to investigate what potential policy actions are necessary to decrease the health inequality in Korea.

• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.150-159
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• 2015

Purpose: This study was aimed to identify gender-based health inequality and explore impacting factors on health inequality in one province in Korea. Methods: This was an explanatory study using the secondary data on Chungnam province from the Fifth Community Health Survey from August 16 to Oct 31, 2012. Variables included in this analysis were education level, poverty, marital status, and residential community for socio-cultural characteristics and subjective health status as an indicator of health inequality. Data were analyzed by ${\chi}^2$-test, t-test, ANOVA, and multiple linear regression. Results: There were gender inequalities and disparities in health, and these inequalities were greater in woman than in man (${\chi}^2$=161.8, p<.001). The impacting factors were education level, poverty, marital status, and residential community, which was accounted for 22.6% of variances of health inequality. Among these variables, gender showed the largest influence in health inequalities. Conclusion: To solve health inequalities, it should be considered gender differences based on social determinants of health. It is necessary to develop long term project based on these results and the social determinants model of World Health Organization.