Factors affecting poverty among people with disabilities and antipoverty policies in South Korea

Abstract

Previous studies analysed factors of poverty among people with disabilities without considering hierarchical or segmented structure by disability type or degree. Such approaches overlooked an auto-correlation problem among observations and overestimated the significance of the coefficient. In this study, a hierarchical generalised linear model (HGLM) was used to overcome these problems. This study found that sex, age, educational level, health condition, employment, being head of the household, area of residence, number of household members, and employment and work-life discrimination all had a significant effect on poverty among people with disabilities. The author suggests more detailed antipoverty policies.

Keywords::

• poverty
• people with disabilities
• disability type
• disability degree
• HGLM

Notes

^1. For example, Goldsmat, O'Brien, Clatts, and Mcguire (2005), Kim and Choi (2006), and Law and Yuen (2012) used gender (or sex) as a level 2 variable in HGLM.

^2. The Korean National Disability Survey was also conducted in 2008 and 2011. The author could not obtain the raw data until empirical analysing was completed, so this may be a limitation of the study. However, as Jo and Kulys (2008) observed, it seems that using 2005 KNDS raw data in this study cannot be a critical issue for finding fundamental causes of poverty of PWDs and suggesting antipoverty policies in Korea.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dongug Kang

Dongug Kang is a professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Welfare, Korea National University of Welfare, South Korea.