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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Public pensions as the great equalizer?
— decomposition of old-age income inequality in South Korea, 1998-2010 | | Author(s) | Sun-Jae Hwang |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging and Social Policy, vol 28, no 2, April-June 2016 |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis, April-June 2016 |
| Pages | pp 81-97 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Pensions ; Economic status [elderly] ; Poverty ; Quantitative studies ; Cross sectional surveys ; Korea. |
| Annotation | The redistributive effects of public pensions on old-age income inequality are examined, testing whether public pensions function as the "great equalizer". Unlike the well-known alleviating effect of public pensions on old-age poverty, the effects of public pensions on old-age income inequality more generally have been less examined, particularly outside Western countries. Using repeated cross-sectional data on older Koreans between 1998 and 2010, the author applied Gini coefficient decomposition to measure the impact of various income sources on old-age inequality, particularly focusing on public pensions. The findings show that, contrary to expectations, public pension benefits have inequality intensifying effects on old-age income in Korea, even countervailing the alleviating effects of public assistance. This rather surprising result is due to the specific institutional context of the Korean public pension system, and suggests that the "structuring" of welfare policies could be as important as their expansion for older people, particularly for developing welfare states. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160520215 A |
| Classmark | JJ: F:W: W6: 3DQ: 3KB: 7DK |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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