지역사회의 질 수준과 격차

Exploring Regional Disparities: the Social Quality Approach

Social quality (SQ) describes how favorable the socio-environmental components are that impact the possibility of an individual’s life. Despite the close relationship between social empowerment and SQ, the components and regional disparities of SQ have not yet been examined. This study investigated regional disparities of SQ among 230 local governments in South Korea. Using the standardized methods of SQ, we examined the interrelationships among institutional capacity, citizen capacity, and their associations with population-based health indicators. Under the principles of conceptual suitability, clarity, reliability, consistency, changeability, and comparability, we collected a total of 81 SQ indicators and selected 19 indicators out of them. They were transformed by the imputation of missing values, ESS standardization, and GIS transformation. As a result of analysis, the SQ indicator of each community varied by the degree of institutional capacity and citizen capacity and community size. We also found that the disparities of the SQ indicators was associated with financial independence such as the per capita residence tax or estimated expenditure of each community. Large SQ indicator gaps between local governments have become a challenge for each country to promote fairness among regions. To meet such a challenge, each local government needs to establish a reference and manage the SQ indicators.