Concern about the rise of lazy welfare queens? An empirical explanation of the underdevelopment of the redistributive welfare system in South Korea

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis study investigates why South Korea has maintained a minimalist welfare state with little redistribution of income. Inspired by the behavioral/attitudinal approach of Alesina and his colleagues, this study focuses on the perception that people who do not work become lazy. This belief is related to the anti-welfare sentiment that non-working benefits encourage laziness. This study shows that perceptions of work and laziness are associated with preferences for redistribution, not only among South Koreans, but also among individuals in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries. Further, such perceptions are also associated with the redistribution policies chosen in a country. This study provides evidence that societal beliefs about work and laziness, along with several other political and economic factors, such as pre-tax income inequality, political institutions, and union density, may explain the small-scale redistribution in South Korea.

Welfare chauvinism among co‐ethnics: Evidence from a conjoint experiment in South Korea

“…Some argue that welfare chauvinist ideas are generally associated with insurance‐based, contributory welfare states (Ennser‐Jedenastik, 2018), while others have found that universal provision is associated with lower levels of such attitudes (Mau & Burkhardt, 2009). Our results indicate that respondents favour welfare for those who work and are thus ‘contributing’, as other scholarship on South Korean welfare attitudes has found (Roh, 2013), but nonetheless a strong preference for those with low incomes – that is support for means testing. Paradoxically, however, when given the chance to impose recipient contribution requirements (rent co‐payment), we find little evidence of an origins‐based discrimination effect.…”

“…Second, attitudes with respect to welfare deservingness also appear to have a significant impact on allocation decisions. Existing research has shown that South Koreans believe poverty results from ‘laziness’ and that the idle are not worthy of public assistance (Roh, 2013). Our findings also indicate that respondents clearly favour welfare for the working over those who do not, and this also suggests that South Korea's contribution‐based system of welfare reflects popular preferences, as Roh (2013) has argued.…”

Conditionality, austerity and welfare: Financial crisis and its impact on welfare in Italy and Korea

“…In Korea, although unions were involved in the Tripartite Commission, their power should not be exaggerated as they are comparatively unorganized. This is well indicated by the union density rate of about 10 percent when the country was hit by the crisis in 1997 (Roh, 2013;Visser, 2011). In Italy, union power to participate in the reform process has disappeared, when comparing its relations with the government in the 1992 and 2012 crises (Culpepper and Regan, 2014;Sacchi, 2013).…”

“…In August 1999, the Korean government declared a new guiding principle for social protection. It emphasized social safety nets as citizenship rights (Office of the President of Korea, 2000), which was a considerable change in Korea, where the growth-first-redistribution-later ideology had prevailed for more than 30 years (Ramesh, 1995;Roh, 2013).…”