Social Insurance in an Aging Population: Impacts of a Government Transfer Program in South Korea

Influence of social pension on well‐being and health of the rural elderly: the case of South Korea

“…We defined the older‐aged group who is eligible for the BP as individuals aged over 65 years and the non‐elderly group as individuals aged 55–65 years. Although financial status is additionally used in determining BP eligibility, we use only the age condition to represent BP eligibility because of concerns about the endogeneity of income (Fan 2010; Koh and Yang 2021).…”

“…South Korea (hereafter, Korea) is no exception to these ageing challenges. According to Statistics Korea (2020, 2021, the share of the rural population over age 65 steadily increased from 21.7 per cent in 2000 to 42.3 per cent in 2020, while the share of older individuals in urban areas increased from 6.21 to 16.4 per cent. Moreover, the key points of Korea's ageing problem are rural-urban disparities; the rural elderly population has high labour participation, low economic status, and low NP coverage and generally does not utilise much from public elder policy and elder care (Park 2004(Park , 2019.…”

“…Although existing studies have examined the impacts of pension programmes on health in rural elderly populations, they have exploited programmes targeted at specific groups such as farmers and rural populations (Fan 2010; Kaushal 2014; Cheng et al 2018; Shu 2018). A related strand of studies in Korea has attempted to investigate the impacts of BP on the elderly population's consumption spending, labour supply, income, well‐being, and health (Kim 2015; Lee et al 2019; Pak 2020, 2021; Koh and Yang 2021; Hwang and Lee 2022). However, the influence of the nationwide social pension programme on the rural elderly population has been relatively unexplored in Korea.…”

“…Pak (2020) evaluated the efficacy of the 2014 social pension reform using various measures of subjective well‐being (SWB) and found that the reformed pension improved subjective financial well‐being among beneficiaries. Koh and Yang (2021) examined the BOAP's effects on private cash transfers from adult children to their elderly parents and elderly individuals' living arrangements and labour supply. They found that the programme reduced private cash transfers but had little impact on the probability of co‐residence with adult children or grandchildren or the elderly population's labour supply.…”

“…The PE supported 13.4 per cent of the elderly population in 2006 and was replaced by the BOAP in 2008 (Jeong et al 2007). Although diverse income support programmes such as the NPS, NBLS, and PE were implemented in the early 2000s, only a small portion of the elderly population was supported because of the strict eligibility criteria (Kim 2015; Koh and Yang 2021).…”