Intergenerational income mobility and inequality in South Korea

Using data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS), recent trends in intergenerational income mobility were explored, examining the relationship between income mobility and income inequality in South Korea. The study found that the intergenerational elasticity of income is about 0.2 and there is no clear‐cut trend in intergenerational income mobility. In addition, this study showed that there is no systematic relation between rising income inequality and intergenerational income mobility in contemporary Korea. Overall, the results indicate that intergenerational income mobility is irresponsive to the income inequality the respondents experienced growing up. It is assumed that education and welfare transfer programs might offset the consequences of income inequality by leading to upward mobility for children from low‐income households.     

Welfare Reform and Elderly Immigrants' Health Insurance Coverage: The Roles of Federal and State Medicaid Eligibility Rules

Immigrants' access to federally-funded Medicaid became limited after welfare reform imposed restrictive noncitizen eligibility rules. This study used a representative sample from the Current Population Survey (N?=?105,873) and state-level data to examine the effects of these policy changes on elderly immigrants. Triple difference-in-differences analyses show that federal restriction of eligibility had a significantly negative association with elderly immigrants' Medicaid coverage, and generous state eligibility had significantly positive relationships with Medicaid and any health insurance coverage. Findings indicate the important role of eligibility on elderly immigrants' health insurance coverage. Results call for social workers' actions to expand elderly immigrants' Medicaid eligibility.     

The Development and Initial Psychometric Evaluation of the Korean Career Stress Inventory for College Students

The purpose of this study was to develop a Korean College Stress Inventory (KCSI), which is designed to measure Korean college students' experiences and symptoms of career stress. Even though there have been numerous scales related to career issues, few scales measure the career stress construct and its dimensions. Factor structure, internal consistency, and concurrent validity of the KCSI scores are described. Results indicated that the internal consistency reliabilities of 4 KCSI subscale scores were reasonably high. In addition, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the modified 4‐factor solution seemed to provide a reasonably good fit to the data. Implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Impacts of child development accounts on parenting practices: evidence from a randomised statewide experiment

ABSTRACT

This study examines the impact of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) on parenting practices of mothers with young children in a statewide randomised experiment conducted in the United States. The experiment included 2704 primary caregivers of children born in Oklahoma during 2007: 1358 were randomly assigned to the treatment group and 1346 to the control group. Structural equation modelling suggests that the punitive-parenting score among treatment participants was .12 standard deviations smaller than that among control participants (p < . 05). Findings indicate that CDAs reduce punitive parenting, and may serve as an additional tool for positive parent–child interactions.     

Semiparametric methods in nonlinear time series analysis: a selective review

Time series analysis is a tremendous research area in statistics and econometrics. In a previous review, the author was able to break down up 15 key areas of research interest in time series analysis. Nonetheless, the aim of the review in this current paper is not to cover a wide range of somewhat unrelated topics on the subject, but the key strategy of the review in this paper is to begin with a core the ‘curse of dimensionality’ in nonparametric time series analysis, and explore further in a metaphorical domino-effect fashion into other closely related areas in semiparametric methods in nonlinear time series analysis.     

Poverty affects access to regular source of primary care among the general population in Hong Kong

A territory‐wide two‐stage stratified random sample of 2,282 community‐dwelling Hong Kong adults were surveyed between 2014 and 2015 to investigate the association between poverty and regular source of primary care utilization. Poverty was operationalized by income‐poverty and deprivation. About 94% of our sample reported having regular source of primary care (Western and/or Chinese medical practitioner) and about 69% among them were in private sector. Multivariable logistic regression showed that people who were income‐poor and deprived were less likely to have regular source of primary care (income‐poor: OR = 0.523, p = .027; deprived: OR = 0.488, p = .007) and visit private primary care doctors (income‐poor: OR = 0.445, deprived: OR = 0.222, both p < .0001). Those who had chronic diseases were more likely to have regular source of primary care (multimorbid: OR = 10.709, p < .0001), but less likely to access care in the private sector (one chronic disease: OR = 0.690, p = .019; multimorbid: OR = 0.374, p < .0001) than those without. Further, being older and less skilled were significantly associated with less likelihood of visiting a private doctor. Path analysis showed that the number of chronic diseases had significant indirect effect on having regular source of primary care with being income‐poor and deprived as the mediators (β = ?.0183, p = .0016). Therefore, despite a public health‐care system that aims to deny no one from adequate health care for lack of means, regular source of primary care in Hong Kong is found to be pro‐rich. Future policies should tackle the problem of health‐care inequalities to meet the needs of the underprivileged.     

Efficient method for identification of cyclic trends in incidence

Various methods for estimating the parameters of the simple harmonic curve and corresponding statistics for testing the significance of the sinusoidal trend are investigated. The locally reasonable method is almost fully efficient when the size of the trend is very small; however, the maximum likelihood method is preferred generally, especially when the trend is not very small. The log likelihood ratio test is more powerful than the R test which is based on locally reasonable estimates. The efficient method and the log likelihood ratio or equivalent tests are the best statistical techniques for identifying the cyclical trend. Thus they are the methods of choice when adequate computing facilities are available.     

Welfare Reform and Asset Accumulation: Asset Limit Changes,Financial Assets,and Vehicle Ownership*

Objective. Over the past decade, federal and state governments have substantially liberalized asset limits in welfare. This article examines whether this policy change promotes asset accumulation among the target population of actual and potential welfare recipients. Methods. Utilizing household data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics as well as state data, this study employs a difference‐in‐difference approach in order to determine whether state asset limits affect the target population's financial and vehicle asset accumulation. This study develops a new policy measure that considers the time period following the adoption of liberalized asset limits. Results. Analysis results suggest that increased asset limits may have successfully encouraged the target population's asset accumulation. The earlier a state raised its asset limit, the more likely welfare recipients were to accumulate financial assets and to possess bank accounts. Conclusion. It is recommended to liberalize asset eligibility rules to promote long‐term economic advancement of poor households.     

Insights on medical tourism: markets as networks and the role of strong ties

Despite a huge amount of speculation and expectation surrounding medical tourism, hard empirical evidence is only now beginning to emerge. This paper widens the focus of discussion by contrasting two country experiences (UK and Korea) which on the surface illustrate the diversity of medical tourism and little else. However, considered more comparatively, the accounts contribute toward wider, albeit tentative, theoretical understandings, and insights. The paper is drawn from two broad programs of empirical study conducted over three years in UK and Korea, respectively. The article is structured in three parts: first, a brief overview of policy, legislative, and accreditation frameworks that exist to govern medical tourist flows. Second, we present evidence around flows, demographics, treatment, and medical tourism for Korea and UK (both for supply and demand). Third, we examine conceptual and theoretical implications of this evidence. We argue that viewing medical tourism as a global market is problematic; some medical tourist markets are best viewed as networks with long-term exchange relationships; some specific areas of activity do function more strongly as price-related; decision making around medical tourism frequently involves a range of information and social networks (economic action as embedded social structure); and medical tourism is a function of globalization.