Two views of community welfare, and a preference for residualism

The importance of social welfare for a better quality of life, and for basic rights, is described as rising. Welfare is done at the level of the state, and also, closer in, at the level of a community. Practical approaches can be defined across the state, the locality, the household, and the person. Community welfare, in this account, is residents, in the range of their own locality, working through the area’s welfare tasks together. Under local self-government, welfare services once run as central-government subsidy projects have been transferred to community work, as an institutional way of meeting residents’ needs. A local government is a body that, on the basis of a territory and according to the will of the residents who make it up, handles the area’s public affairs on its own authority and responsibility.

Residualism’s basic philosophy, resting on a liberal idea, stresses equality of opportunity and freedom from the state. It does not treat unequal social conditions as the problem, and stresses only equality of opportunity. It prefers to leave the distribution of value to the market, and treats the social risks a person meets as a personal problem. Poverty, in this view, is read as a lash against laziness and a missing spirit of self-reliance. Welfare picks out people who cannot get by on their own and offers a minimum of humane support; the recipients are confined to a vulnerable group. To receive it, a person has to prove they are poor, and in that process a social stigma is hard to avoid. Because the benefit is aimed at a small group and at a modest level, it does not need a large fiscal base. Korea’s most representative residual practice is named as the selection of basic-livelihood recipients: support is aimed at low-income people defined by a range of property and income, and at socially vulnerable groups without a capacity to work, including older people, in the form of living costs or needed services and programs. Limits are also named: the recipients are few, so the practice is inefficient for the development of society as a whole, and the stigma of being labeled a vulnerable group can itself lower a person’s quality of life.

Institutionalism, resting on a social-democratic idea, treats unequal social conditions as the problem, stresses equality of conditions rather than of opportunity, and emphasizes a freedom toward the state through active involvement. When stated conditions are met, welfare is offered to ordinary citizens. Resources are contributed according to capacity and spent where they are needed, so a redistribution of income necessarily follows; the aim is to make citizens’ situations somewhat fairer. Community institutional welfare pays a social benefit to everyone treated as a recipient, regardless of income or property. Korea’s most representative institutional practice is named as education. Article 31(2) and (3) of the present Constitution provides that every citizen may receive compulsory education free of charge. No special condition or qualification is needed beyond being a citizen, so the benefit applies to everyone treated as a recipient. The counterpart difficulty is also named: enormous resources are required, so doubts about sustainability keep appearing, and the risk of a fiscal crisis from abuse of institutional welfare is described as having been shown, which is why the practice has to be fitted to a society’s and a country’s conditions.

At the community level, residual welfare is said to cost less than an institutional model and to be more efficient, and, because services are concentrated, their quality can be relatively high. Institutional community welfare reduces the troublesome procedures of a means test and a sorting, and therefore administrative cost, and, by meeting people’s needs more widely, can raise the quality of life for society as a whole. The writer supports residualism, while saying both views are needed for decent practice, and that an ideal application would mix them in a suitable way. The long argument between them, in this reading, has not reached agreement because the strengths and weaknesses of each are relative. The more practical question, for Korea, is which claim is more reasonable for building a welfare state in the country’s actual conditions. Korea has joined the ranks of welfare states, but the history of settling a welfare idea is shorter than that of more established welfare countries, and the stretch of practice without foreign aid is shorter still. A rapid buildup has left many gaps. Uncertainty about whether the social fiscal base can sustain institutional welfare is raised, and a widening rich-poor gap, which deepens the difficulty of vulnerable groups, is also given as a reason for preferring a residual view in Korea’s present fiscal setting.

COVID-19 left in its period, and who holds the work

In the period when COVID-19 was spreading, prevention in daily life was strongly stressed. Citizens were urged to wear a mask and to use hand sanitizer. Under the rule of supply and demand, prices for both jumped, hoarding and shortages followed, and the government came to supply public masks. Social distancing was also stressed: crowded places were to be avoided as far as possible, gatherings put off, unnecessary contact avoided even when asking after someone, and a handshake replaced by an elbow greeting. As the epidemic continued to spread, marts, online shopping, and so-called untact marketing actually sold more. People who had lived by serving regulars in the locality — restaurants, businesses built around meetings and assemblies, and the entertainment trade — often had to close. An infectious illness of this kind also sharply worsened the health of low-income older people and children, and raised the burden of medical costs. One local problem named is that children and older people in vulnerable community-welfare groups were falling ill more often. Remedies named include a public-mask sales system and free provision of hand sanitizer. How heavily a vulnerable group is affected is also said to depend on a country’s population density and level of economic development, the availability of food, income and its distribution, local environmental conditions, and the level of medical care, public medicine, and health services.

Local welfare practice, in this account, aims at solving a community’s problems and at social integration, and that work asks for broad participation by residents, voluntary cooperation, and democratic procedure, in a cooperative and even-tempered atmosphere. The writer’s own view is that community welfare is not something else: it is residents together promoting the area’s economy and its quantitative development, and working at policy for a better quality of life. Residents should be the subject, a social worker should help, and the local government should make the final decisions. Community welfare is not work for a single person, and not a problem to be run from a theoretical model alone. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A Korean comparison of residual and institutional community welfare, with a residualist preference for Korea, and with COVID-19 left in its period.

Last updated: 14 November 2026