Deokho Cho (p), Changwhan Yeo

Ahmad Komarulzaman

The poverty problem of elderly (65 years old and over) in Korea remains pervasive. The one of potential elderly (55-64) will also become a big social issue after retirement from the job market. This paper tries to figure out the factors that affect the elderly and potential elderly household poverties in order to establish adequate welfare policies. The paper merges ten years Korean Welfare Panel Data using two merge key variables (hid and time). This study implements the panel logit analysis on the factors which affect the poverties of the elderly and potential elderly. It analyzes demographic, economic, and systematic related variables. Based on the analysis results, the ordinary income and housing values variables affect positively regular households irrespective of age groups. Main economic activities and sex variables have a negative effect on the poverty problems. The government chooses the policy alternatives for improving the poverty problems, considering the poverty characteristics of age groups, economic activity, sex, and so on. This paper suggests some current and future policy alternatives considering all together the poverty problems of elderly and potential elderly households.

Ahmad Komarulzaman (p), Eelke de Jong, Jeroen Smits

Deokho Cho

Access to water is considered a human right. Everyone should have sufficient, safe and affordable water for personal and domestic uses. Commonly, water affordability is measured as the proportion of household income spent on water supply. For developing countries this is problematic, as many households use water from free sources, like wells, springs, rivers and lakes. As these free sources are often of questionable quality, a substantial number of households may use them because they cannot afford the better quality piped or bottled water. These households then suffer from what can be called a “hidden” affordability problem. In previous research on developing countries, households using free sources were excluded, as a result of which affordability problems were largely underestimated. We investigate both the “revealed” and this “hidden” water affordability problem in Indonesia. For households who do not report data on water expenditure, we estimate the water price on the basis of the average price paid by other households in the same area. If we look only at households with paid water, 1.8% of the Indonesian households suffer from an affordability problem. However, if the households that use free sources are included, this percentage increases to 15.2%. Hence the scale of the hidden affordability problem is far bigger than that of the revealed affordability problem. Findings imply that water affordability problems in developing countries have been significantly masked by the fact that earlier research is restricted to households that pay for their water supply.