The National Survey of the Living Conditions and Welfare Needs of Older Koreans finds that in 2020, 84 percent of those 65 and older had one or more chronic conditions and 54.9 percent had multiple chronic conditions. According to a 2021 report by the National Health Insurance Service, health expenditure on people 65 and older accounted in 2020 for 43.1 percent of total health expenditure. Health is a key determinant of quality of life in older persons, for whom dietary conditions can be a direct effect on their health. The current trend is such that, with the rapid rise of the nuclear family, older persons are increasingly living on their own, apart from their adult children. Older adults who have no adult children around to prepare meals for them may suffer a deterioration in their dietary quality or even nutritional deficiency. Various elder meal programs have been piloted of late in Korea, following the government’s announcement in November 2018 of the Integrated Community Care Initiative. Some of these meal care programs, implemented as part of the Community Social Service Investment Project and in conjunction with the Community Care Initiative, have been delivered to people 65 and older with less than 160 percent of the standard median income, during the one-year period between July 2020 and June 2021 in four municipalities. In these programs, dieticians examined the dietary habits and health status of the participating older persons, then offered them group meals or home-delivered meals 3 to 5 times a week. Some older persons who had difficulty with mastication were offered, via home delivery, fully-cooked consistency-modified food including liquidized meals. In the same year, as part of its Integrated Community Care Initiative, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has implemented meal care programs for older adults living in Busan and Jeju. There is also an “nutritious meal” delivery program, which, ongoing since last year in Chuncheon City and Hwaseong City and carried out by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, with its target beneficiaries selected based not so much on income criteria as on health status and dietary needs, is aimed at helping older adults prevent declines in bodily functions and maintain healthy-living capability.

The National Survey of the Living Conditions and Welfare Needs of Older Koreans finds that in 2020, 84 percent of those 65 and older had one or more chronic conditions and 54.9 percent had multiple chronic conditions. According to a 2021 report by the National Health Insurance Service, health expenditure on people 65 and older accounted in 2020 for 43.1 percent of total health expenditure. Health is a key determinant of quality of life in older persons, for whom dietary conditions can be a direct effect on their health. The current trend is such that, with the rapid rise of the nuclear family, older persons are increasingly living on their own, apart from their adult children. Older adults who have no adult children around to prepare meals for them may suffer a deterioration in their dietary quality or even nutritional deficiency. Various elder meal programs have been piloted of late in Korea, following the government’s announcement in November 2018 of the Integrated Community Care Initiative. Some of these meal care programs, implemented as part of the Community Social Service Investment Project and in conjunction with the Community Care Initiative, have been delivered to people 65 and older with less than 160 percent of the standard median income, during the one-year period between July 2020 and June 2021 in four municipalities. In these programs, dieticians examined the dietary habits and health status of the participating older persons, then offered them group meals or home-delivered meals 3 to 5 times a week. Some older persons who had difficulty with mastication were offered, via home delivery, fully-cooked consistency-modified food including liquidized meals. In the same year, as part of its Integrated Community Care Initiative, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has implemented meal care programs for older adults living in Busan and Jeju. There is also an “nutritious meal” delivery program, which, ongoing since last year in Chuncheon City and Hwaseong City and carried out by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, with its target beneficiaries selected based not so much on income criteria as on health status and dietary needs, is aimed at helping older adults prevent declines in bodily functions and maintain healthy-living capability.

Support for families of persons with disabilities is an area where family policy overlaps with disability policy. To put it another way, it combines ‘support for family caregiving’ and ‘support for persons with disabilities and their families’. This study defines family policy as “public support for family caregiving”, and examines what support programs are in place in several selected countries to support family caregiving in families of persons with disabilities. For Korea, it is with the legislation of the Act on Welfare Support for Children with Disabilities (2012) and the Act on Guarantee of Rights and Support for Persons with Developmental Disabilities (2015), that “support for families of persons with disabilities” gained legal recognition. Since then services have been provided in an increasing variety for a growing population of eligible beneficiaries. However, support for families of persons with disabilities in Korea is considered as neither something to which those eligible can claim a right nor something the state is mandated to provide. Moreover, the eligibility for such support is constrained considerably by such conditions as the age of the disabled person, the type of disability he has, and the family’s income level. Although it is characteristic of disability that it comes about throughout the life course, this brief focuses on families of children with disabilities, a population that bears relatively little relevance to the “independent living paradigm” and the “principle of self-determination.” Children with disabilities are also a population whose families bear heavy care responsibilities and a burden of high-level care costs. In Korea, an estimated 96 percent of children aged six and under with disabilities, and 82 percent of all children with disabilities, have a family member as the main caregiver.

Support for families of persons with disabilities is an area where family policy overlaps with disability policy. To put it another way, it combines ‘support for family caregiving’ and ‘support for persons with disabilities and their families’. This study defines family policy as “public support for family caregiving”, and examines what support programs are in place in several selected countries to support family caregiving in families of persons with disabilities. For Korea, it is with the legislation of the Act on Welfare Support for Children with Disabilities (2012) and the Act on Guarantee of Rights and Support for Persons with Developmental Disabilities (2015), that “support for families of persons with disabilities” gained legal recognition. Since then services have been provided in an increasing variety for a growing population of eligible beneficiaries. However, support for families of persons with disabilities in Korea is considered as neither something to which those eligible can claim a right nor something the state is mandated to provide. Moreover, the eligibility for such support is constrained considerably by such conditions as the age of the disabled person, the type of disability he has, and the family’s income level. Although it is characteristic of disability that it comes about throughout the life course, this brief focuses on families of children with disabilities, a population that bears relatively little relevance to the “independent living paradigm” and the “principle of self-determination.” Children with disabilities are also a population whose families bear heavy care responsibilities and a burden of high-level care costs. In Korea, an estimated 96 percent of children aged six and under with disabilities, and 82 percent of all children with disabilities, have a family member as the main caregiver.

Care services are essential to protecting people’s lives and health and to keeping society functioning well even in crisis situations like covid-19. As the covid-19 pandemic protracts, the question of what to do to protect the rights and interests of long-term care workers has gained added importance. The government has set up in 2020 a set of multi-ministerial support measures for “essential workers” who play indispensable roles in times of the covid-19 pandemic. The workforce for whom the government intends to provide support by those measures include care assistants, who account for most of long-term caregivers. Despite their being a workforce whose services are regarded as essential for the life and physical wellbeing of infirm older persons, caregivers have suffered poor working conditions and mistreatment since well before the covid-19 pandemic. Not only is this a problem for the caregivers themselves. It is a problem also for the quality of care they deliver. The 2019 Long-term Care Survey found that nearly half of all long-term care workers were on an hourly contract, working under poor employment conditions. A substantial percentage of respondents in the survey reported having experienced continued mistreatment from care recipients and their families, in the forms of sexual harassment, verbal/physical violence, and demands for taking on tasks beyond their job scope. Furthermore, a large percentage of long-term care workers were found to have, since the covid-19 pandemic, suffered added anxiety due to cohort isolation, increased risk of infection, job interruption and income loss. Violence and mistreatment toward long-term care workers could increase their job stress and turnover . Care workers’ job stress arising from being mistreated can lead to a quality decline in the services they provide . This study examines, based on the 2021 Survey for Improving the Working Conditions of Long-Term Caregivers, the current state of mistreatment toward care workers and the impact the covid-19 pandemic has had on this essential workforce.

The covid-19 pandemic has affected people’s health and health care use on an increasing scale for over two years since its outbreak in 2020. During the height of the pandemic, health resources were deployed in a concentrated way for the diagnosis and treatment of covid-19 patients. Individuals on their part saw their ability to pay for health care decline as they suffered income loss as a consequence of the restrictions imposed on their economic activities. Fear of covid-19 infection, a psychological factor known to reduce compliance among patients with their health care needs, has led people to forgo receiving services at a health care institution or picking up prescription medications at a pharmacy, as reported in Anderson et al. (2021) as well as in this study. People with chronic conditions need to draw on health care on a continuous basis. They are of particular concern, for their conditions are such that it is as unallowable to set aside their health care needs in a time of infectious disease as in normal times. It is essential that hypertensives and diabetics comply to their health care needs and get continued care especially in order to protect themselves from complications like myocardial infarction and stroke. This brief examines the state of health care use, disease management, and delayed or forgone health care during the covid-19 pandemic as reported by hypertensives and diabetics. The survey on which this study is based was conducted during the period August 3~19 of a total of 1,500 adults aged 19 and older including 500 hypertensives and diabetics. The respondents were asked in the phone survey about the status of their health, unmet health care needs, and disease management.

After having sought to little avail to ease the comprehensive economic sanctions the UN Security Council had imposed on it in 2016, North Korea faced a supplies shortage, what with a breakup in US-DPRK talks in February 2019 and the breakout of the global covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Following the covid-19 pandemic, in particular, North Korea closed its borders and repatriated all Pyongyang-based representatives of international organizations, choosing to isolate itself from the rest of the world. The self-imposed isolation of North Korea is known to have aggravated its supplies shortage. The resumption of the long-halted humanitarian inter-Korean exchange is an urgent step to take for peacemaking on the Korean Peninsula and for ensuring at least a minimum standard of living for North Koreans. According to “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021”, a report published by the UN Food and Agriculture Agency, an estimated 10.9 million North Koreans, or 42.2 percent of the population, were undernourished in the period 2018~2020 and an estimated 300,000, or 18.1 percent, of North Korean children five years of age or younger were stunted from undernourishment in 2020. The nutrition problem that North Korea has is one that requires a proactive approach, as it, in addition to being a matter of humanitarian concern for universal human rights, could, if left untackled, especially as regards children, well engender the problem of population quality in the event of an inter-Korean reunification.

Trends and factors in income distribution have been put under analysis on a continued basis in Korea. Income distribution in Korea is known to have deteriorated in the period spanning the 1990s and the late 2000s. Some previous studies have attributed such deterioration mostly to the widening inequalities in the labor market. In comparison, however, there has been limited attention given to the 2010s, a period for which most indicators point to improvements in income distribution. Drawing on the Survey of Household Finances and Living Conditions, this study examines trends in income distribution in the 2010s and the effects on them of income protection programs.

There is no gainsaying that the ultimate goal of welfare state lies in making people’s life happy. Figure 1 presents a comparison of economic growth and happiness in advanced economies. The points that are placed on the right above the regression line represent countries with a high economic growth rate and a high gross national happiness level. The countries that are positioned on the left above the regression line are those whose gross national happiness levels are high relative to their economic growth. The countries plotted below the regression line, of which Korea is one, feature gross national happiness levels that are low relative to their economic growth. Figure 2 illustrates the negative relation between gross national happiness and the standard deviation of happiness. Discussions of happiness in the context of social policy are mostly about how to increase happiness measures or how to promote the level of happiness people experience in their lives. Happiness inequality has surfaced as an issue of particular importance in such discussions. Figure 1 shows, however, the level of happiness among Koreans remains short of what Korea’s economic achievements suggest. Making a welfare state where people are happy requires not only economic advances, but also the reducing of happiness inequality. Along these lines, it is important to identify, besides those already identified as socioeconomically vulnerable, those with low happiness ratings and, with evidence-based policy measures, help them live with a decent quality of life. This study draws on data from Gallup’s World Poll of some 150 countries, on which the World Happiness Report rankings are based.

A close look at changes in life satisfaction and perceived social cohesion from 2016 onward reveals the following trends. First, life satisfaction fell and self-reported depression levels rose markedly among men in their 40s and 50s and women in their 20s and 30s, and such groups with significant income loss as the self-employed, and those who self-identified as lower-middle class. Second, the public’s sense of national pride, social trust, and perceived social cohesion have increased to a large extent from their pre-pandemic levels. Third, interpersonal trust and social capital at the individual level in contrast has declined from their pre-pandemic levels. The sense of national pride in having, with a systematic quarantine management and the mature civic awareness of Koreans, responded aptly to the covid-19 crisis is thought to have translated into the rise in perceived social cohesion, while it is presumably as a consequence of the disproportionate effects of the pandemic that life satisfaction fell and the level of self-reported depression rose. There is a need to commit wide-ranging policy interventions on the one hand to preventing the effect of covid-19 pandemic from becoming long-term and on the other to promoting social cohesion in response to the growing uncertainties of the present times.