Korea’s elderly population will further increase in the coming decades, and so will the socioeconomic demand for their care. The amount of care services has increased with the introduction of the long-term care insurance, the expansion of the long-term care hospitals, and the elderly care system in the local community. As a result, the long-term care spending, reflecting the demographic structure, reached the OECD average level. However, the coverage level remains low in terms of spending. One of the major cause of the financial inefficiency is the high level of “social hospitalization”. Recently, several policy measures have been taken to reduce social hospitalization, such as the reimbursement rate adjustment, the pilot project of the medical-care integrated judgment system, and the community-based integrated care initiative. However, despite of these policy measures, social hospitalization has not declined. This study proposed several policy suggestions to reduce social hospitalization such as the reform of the financial and delivery system, and strengthening performance evaluation focusing on social hospitalization rate indicators.
According to the 2022 Elderly Statistics, Korea is expected to become a super-aged society by 2025. This article examines public social welfare expenditure, national tax burden, and national debt ratio for countries that have already transitioned to a super-aged society. Also, I look at the current status and the long-term outlook of Korea’s social security financing, focusing on old age policies. Although the study shows that Korea has the financial capacity to respond to the super-aged society, more active policy responses are required, given that our society is rapidly aging. We need to identify an integrated financial situation on social insurance, and discuss its fundamental and structural issues.
Public pensions, such as the national pension, regularly carry out fiscal calculations to check their financial status in advance. The financial calculation is implemented, but the pension law only mentions financial balance, and fiscal goals are not specified in detail. As a result of the financial estimate, only the fiscal balance deficit and fund exhaustion are attracting attention. The original purpose of improving the pension system based on the financial projection results has not been achieved. In this study, the current status is reviewed and a task is proposed to prepare for the financial estimate of the public pension.
As the total fertility rate declines to a level that threatens the socio-economic system, support for child rearing and the realization of child welfare are becoming the centerpiece of the national agenda. In this study, based on OECD statistics and analysis of central government budget data as of 2021, I examined the characteristics of Korea's child finance management and derived some improvement measures.
Our analysis of the central government's child welfare finance found that current child welfare programs are multi-ministerial and segmented by age and characteristic groups, nationally subsidized but without sufficient level of legally mandated subsidization, and focused on child care support for children in early childhood.
In order to improve the efficiency of child welfare finance and the effectiveness of policy implementation, improvement measures can be sought for improving the governance of child policies, systematizing and optimizing the state subsidy rate for projects for children, returning part to central government projects, and establishing a support system for the entire life-cycle of children.
In addition, policy makers may consider returning the financial capacity generated by the reduction in the number of children or improved efficiency to child welfare finance, and an appropriate allocation of resources by the Education Finance Division for school-age children.
Korea’s elderly population will further increase in the coming decades, and so will the socioeconomic demand for their care. The amount of care services has increased with the introduction of the long-term care insurance, the expansion of the long-term care hospitals, and the elderly care system in the local community. As a result, the long-term care spending, reflecting the demographic structure, reached the OECD average level. However, the coverage level remains low in terms of spending. One of the major cause of the financial inefficiency is the high level of “social hospitalization”. Recently, several policy measures have been taken to reduce social hospitalization, such as the reimbursement rate adjustment, the pilot project of the medical-care integrated judgment system, and the community-based integrated care initiative. However, despite of these policy measures, social hospitalization has not declined. This study proposed several policy suggestions to reduce social hospitalization such as the reform of the financial and delivery system, and strengthening performance evaluation focusing on social hospitalization rate indicators.
In this article, based on the evaluation of youth policies prepared after the enactment of the law, I tried to seek the direction of mid to long-term policy development by presenting the principles and directions necessary for setting a new youth policy paradigm.
The background of the emergence of youth issues and the process of formation of youth policies were briefly reviewed, and current policies were evaluated in terms of responsiveness to the implementation phase of policies, uniqueness of youth policies, and responsiveness to policy areas based on a review of the current status of youth policies.
In addition, support for the transition period based on a new transition path, reorganization of policy areas, adherence to the youth cognitive perspective of social policy, strengthening of the principle of bridging gaps and enhancement of policy effectiveness, long-term policy design and linkage, intensive support through policy targeting, population and society Principles and directions for responding flexibly to changes in the economic environment were presented.
