The Effect of Housing-related Material Interests on Koreans' Welfare Attitudes

The Effect of Housing-related Material Interests on Koreans' Welfare Attitudes: Focusing on the Variables Related to the 'Housing Status' (in Korean)

Ahn, Sang-Hoon | Seoul National University

Park, Jong-Yeon | Seoul National University

Kim, Soo-Wan | Kangnam University

The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of housing-related material interests on Koreans’ welfare attitudes. This study first divided ‘welfare attitudes’ into two categories: the perception of income inequality as ‘whole welfare attitudes’, and the degree of support for expanding housing welfare expenditure as ‘program specific welfare attitudes.’ Then this study reviewed the main points of the ‘welfare status model’ and those of the ‘housing class theory.’ After that, this study derived main housing-related material interest variables from the review of theories: home ownership, net housing assets, the monthly housing-related burden and the experience of housing welfare benefits. Using those variables, this study analyzed the fifth wave of ‘Korean Welfare Panel Study’ data by multiple regression analysis (OLS) in order to verify the effect of housing-related material interests on welfare attitudes. The results show that those who have less net housing assets and those who did not receive housing welfare benefits are more likely to perceive the income inequality more severely. In addition, home ownership and net housing assets tend to have a negative effect on the support for expanding housing welfare expenditure; meanwhile, the monthly housing-related burden and the experience of housing welfare benefits tend to have a positive effect. In conclusion, this study shows that those variables derived from new politics discourses such as housing-related material interests and age have significant effects on welfare attitudes in Korea. Moreover, this study also suggests that welfare attitudes are better explained by the model derived from combining the the ‘housing class theory’ and ‘welfare status model.’

key words: welfare attitudes, housing class theory, welfare status model, housing status

Social Welfare Policy, 2013, vol.40, no.4, pp.375 - 398 DOI : 10.15855/swp.2013.40.4.375