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The Determinants of Public Attitudes toward Welfare Spending in Korea: Focusing on Welfare Perceptions and the Quality of Government

Jiho Lee 1 Ah-Ran Hwang 2

1서강대학교 현대정치연구소
2부산대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of public attitudes toward welfare spending in relation with the perception of welfare level. Data from the national survey of ‘the SSK Good Government Research Unit’ are used to perform a logistic regression analysis of the association between welfare attitudes and government perceptions, political orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds. The most prominent finding is that the determinants of welfare attitudes differ markedly between the two different groups of welfare perception. The empirical results say that persons living in a corrupt government tend to prefer welfare spendings despite having low level of welfare, and persons living in a unjust government tend to prefer welfare expansion because welfare level must be low. Persons living in a government of great capacity tend to have positive attitudes to welfare spending despite having a high level of welfare, whereas persons living in a government of less capacity tend to have negative attitudes to welfare expansion because the level of welfare is too high beyond government capacity. This distinction between the two perceptions of welfare level provides a systemic understanding of public attitudes toward welfare spending

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.