Political and Economic Propensities and Welfare Preferences in a Northeast Asian Country

Social welfare is a major issue in both developing and developed countries, including Korea. Political parties are especially struggling with the choice between universal or selective welfare but hardly any clear guidelines exist. This paper reviews universal versus selective welfare concepts and analyzes the individual perceptions of welfare policy preferences. It uses the Supplemental Welfare Perception Data (2010) and implements the ordered logit analysis to figure out the individual opinion on welfare policy. The results show that, in general, people prefer universal welfare to selective one. Especially the high income group and general households prefer universal welfare and middle income households tend to prefer selective one. These results reflect the current socioeconomic situation which is very arguable on the welfare issues in the Korean society. It also discusses the need of social consensus among income groups, tax justice, and political concerns on welfare policy. This study concludes that the government and political parties should make an effort to obtain the public's consensus on welfare policy building, considering the individual welfare perception according to the income level, political, and economic aspects.