노인복지의 현황과 과제

The Condition and Problem of Old-age Welfare

Recently, the problem of the elderly is spreading rapidly. In the West, this problem is regarded to have been caused by the influence of the social transformation, and it has been agreed that the nation must assume the responsibility of freeing them from poverty. This is the reason why Western societies have started to practice public pension and public support system for the senior citizens. Now, our country is also in a situation where a national measure on senior citizens - especially regarding poverty of senior citizens - need to be urgently established. Our country also has social impartiality or the actualization of social justice as the basic national ideology. Our constitution makes clear that social security is one of the most important goal sought by the nation. Amongst the social security services, the most important is the public pension system which guarantees the livelihood in old age. However, the social insurance which serves as the nucleus of the public pension system fails to solve the livelihood of people who have already reached the old age or people who have been omitted from being the subjects for the social security service. In an attempt to solve this problem, the Western societies have already parallely carried out an old age pension system that is funded from tax reductions. This system, which started out about the same time as the insurance-type pension, was a countermeasure to save the aged group who have already reached the old age. The reason that they have carried out this system regardless of financial hardships is because they recognize the aged citizens as merited citizens who have contributed to the national development. Therefore, they believe that the country should naturally take responsibility of their old-age life. We should take this fact as a lesson to guide us. This thesis examines the current welfare system for the elderly which is studied separately under Social Security System, Senior Citizen Employment System, Indirect In come Security System, Facility for Senior Citizens Policy, Home-care Senior Citizen protection Policy, etc. ; and presents the problems of these policies and their solutions. On the other hand, their paper introduces various welfare charity services for senior citizens operated by religious group, and also considers possible programs. Such programs include helping poor neighbors, establishing schools for the elderly, leisure programs, constructing and operating homes for the elderly, supporting funds for the maintenance of old-age meeting homes, ets. The fact that in the West, more than 75% of the senior citizen services and more than 50% are of the home-care old-age welfare are religiously-affiliated, could serve as a good lesson for us. Solution to the senior citizen problem can be realized by the government's social welfare policy, along with the active participation from civilian organization.