2013, Vol.20, No.3

Korea Social Policy Review 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 2.47

pISSN : 1226-0525
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kasp

The degree of delegation related to the social security acts is involved in the candidate selection methods and the standing committee system. The social security acts with a small amount of delegation have an affinity with the bottom-up selection methods and the standing committee to guarantee long term in office. In Germany, the bottom-up selection method which guarantees the right of party members to nominate candidates and the standing committee to guarantee long term in office have an affinity with the Social Acts with less delegation. But the social security acts with a large number of delegation have an affinity with the top-down selection methods and the standing committee not to guarantee long term in office. In Korea, the top-down selection method in which the central headquarter of the party dominates the selection process, and the standing committee whose members are to be selected every two years have an affinity with the Social Security Acts with the excessive delegation.

The discussion of “new risks” in the field of social policy started to gain attention in the late 1990s and it is commonly argued that new risks are provoked by deindustrialization and/or globalization being more concentrated among the young, women and low skilled individuals. This study commences its inquiry with a conceptualization of labour market risk in an attempt to critically rethink the argument of new risk. A reevaluation of the concept is followed by an empirical investigation on the different types of risks and their changes by different degree. Eight-teen countries are selected in order to provide a comparative account to understand new risk. These are comparatively analyzed using the fuzzy-set ideal type approach to discover different types of social risks and to measure degrees of changes in relation to social risk. In sum, this paper aims to answer: what is new risk? and how do the characteristic of labour market risks differ in different post-industrial countries? The findings suggest that the types of risk are diverse and the speed or the directions of shift are also diverse.

The purpose of this study is to present empirical evidence for discussion of financing social welfare via estimating optimal tax burden in the main member countries of the OECD by using Hausman-Taylor method considering endogeneity of explanatory variables. Also, the author produced an international tax comparison index reflecting theoretical hypotheses on revenue-expenditure nexus within a model to compare real tax burden by countries and to examine feasibility of tax increase in Korea. As a result of the analysis, the higher the level of tax burden was, the higher the level of welfare expenditure was, indicating the connection between high burden and high welfare from the aspect of scale. The results also indicated that the subject countries recently entered into the state of low tax burden. Meanwhile, Korea had maintained low burden until the late 1990s but the tax burden soared up since the financial crisis related to the IMF. However, due to the impact of foreign economy and the tax reduction policy, it reentered into the low-burden state after 2009. On the other hand, the degree of social welfare expenditure’s reducing tax burden has been gradually enhanced since the crisis. In this context, the current optimal tax burden ratio of Korea as of 2010 may be 25.8%~26.5% of GDP based on input of welfare expenditure variables, a percent that Korea was investigated to be a ‘high tax burden-low ITC’ country whose tax increase of 0.7~1.4%p may be feasible and that the success of tax system reform for tax increase might be higher probability when compare to others. However, measures of increasing social security contributions and consumption tax were analyzed to be improper from the aspect of managing finance when compared to increase in other tax items, considering the relatively higher ITC. Tax increase is not necessarily required though there may be room for tax increase; the optimal tax burden ratio can be understood as the level that may be achieved on average when compared to other nations, not as the “proper” level. Thus, discussion of tax increase should be accompanied with comprehensive understanding of models of economic developmental difference from nations and institutional & historical attributes included in specific tax mix.