In 2020, covid-19 plunged the world economy into turmoil. The pandemic’s economic shockwaves affected Korea too, making life even harder for its vulnerable groups. Protracted social distancing led to income declines for not only socially vulnerable households, but also a segment of high-income selfemployed people, thereby creating new at-risk groups.
The structure of the Korean family has undergone significant changes since the 2000s. One-person households have increased over the years, with a majority of them comprised of either elderly persons or young people. Older adults and young people who live alone tend be unstable in their economic participation. They are highly susceptible to changes in economic conditions and, in that sense, have come under the direct impact of covid-19.
The data on which this discussion is based come from Statistics Korea’s Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES). This brief examines quarterly changes in income among one-person households between 2019 and 2020, and identifies groups that are particularly vulnerable to the economic impact of covid-19. Income in this brief refers to equivalised disposable income, i.e., a household’s disposable income divided by the square root of the number of members in the household.
The unit used here for analysis is the household.
Abuse and violence against weaker members of society have long persisted throughout the history of humanity. Over time, however, the emergence and spread of the modern notion of human rights brought changes in public awareness that led to increased intervention in abuse and violence cases. Child abuse, elder abuse and domestic violence, once considered family matters, are increasingly viewed as issues in need of state intervention, thanks in part also to recent media reports that brought to light some grave cases of abuse. This brief looks at social services―both social welfare services and protective services―that are in place to respond to abuse and violence, and discusses what should be done to improve the delivery of these services.
The number of children in need has declined over the years. The importance of foster home has grown as the demands for child care become increasingly characterized by high levels of specialization and diversification. Also, the demand for quality in child care has led to a social tendency toward smaller facilities. Against this background, Korea’s child welfare facilities, having long served as providers of outof-home and alternative care for children in need under 18 years of age, have since around 2000 been facing the need to change their functions and roles.
Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) based the production of its income distribution measures on the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) until before 2016. HIES had been persistently criticized for having omitted high-income households while including cases of underreported income, thereby underestimating the actual state of income inequality. Considerable dispute was occasioned as the disposable income Gini turned out to be higher when calculated based on the Survey of Household
Finances and Living Conditions (SHFLC), which was first conducted in 2012, than on HIES. In December 2017, KOSTAT began producing its income distribution measures based on the SHFLC data combined with administrative records. In what follows, income data drawn from SHFLC will be referred to as “survey data”, and “survey data supplemented with administrative information” as “combined data.”
With covid-19 widespread, the need for a culture of taking sick leave has gained increasing social attention. However, the institutional framework is not strong enough to promote such a culture. Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested in March this year that the working conditions of workplaces must change to foster a workplace culture that supports taking days off when sick. Recent public health guidelines published by the government recommends first and foremost to “stay home from work or school when ill.” The Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act stipulates that the employer can give a hospitalized or quarantined employee a paid leave of absence, although by no means does this mean that the employer is required by law to grant the employee the right to take paid days off for rest.
OECD’s health statistics published in July this year revealed that the proportion of people aged 15 and older who considered themselves in good health in 2018 was as low as 32.0 percent in Korea, lower than in any other OECD country. On OECD-average, close to seven in ten people rated themselves as healthy (67.9 percent). OECD countries with less than half of their people in this age range who considered themselves in good health were, apart from Korea, Latvia (46.9 percent), Lithuania (44.0 percent) and Japan (35.5 percent).
Korea’s total fertility rate (TFR) was estimated to be 0.92 in 2019. It was the second year in a row for Korea to post a TFR below 1, portending a population decline in the years to come. With the three rounds of its Basic Plan for Aging Society and Population, the Korean government has expanded its work-family balance policy and childcare services for young children and introduced childcare and child allowance programs.
As covid-19 spreads across the globe, governments the world over, facing devastating socioeconomic crises, have unveiled various policy packages. In the US alone as of May, an estimated 19.6 million jobs were reported to have been vanished since the covid-19 pandemic broke out in February. The unemployment rate was 13.3 percent. It’s quite a different picture in Europe. Some European welfare states have rolled out policies to keep mass unemployment at bay. Germany, for example, induced reduced work hours and compensated, through a state salary scheme, cuts in working hours, thereby keeping the unemployment rates low at under 5 percent.
As medicinal technologies continue to advance, the development of new drugs, especially those targeting serious conditions like cancer and rare diseases, has been on the global rise. These highpriced specialty drugs account for an increasing share of pharmaceutical expenditure. Also, facilitating the availability of new drugs has become a subject of growing attention, and new methods of ensuring prompt availability of new drugs, such as accelerated approval and risk-sharing arrangements (RSAs),
have been used widely around the world. With the reliance on fast-track approvals growing, however, the evidence on which to base reimbursement decisions is becoming increasingly uncertain.
