The Social Insecurity Perceptions and the Implications for Social Policies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the level, contents and related factors of social insecurity perception. As the fourth year research of five-year studies on “Korea’s Social Insecurity Perception and the Implications for Social Policy,” this study was conducted a survey targeting the aged 45 to 64 and quantitative analyses with the data.The questions were highly reliable to measure the social insecurity perception, areas of social insecurity perception are ‘unfairness and distrust of the government’, ‘competition’, and ‘social incident/accident’. The higher the perception of social insecurity is, the more likely it is to be perceived of a negative impact on social development As a result of a combination analysis of individual psychological anxiety and social insecurity perceptions, it was found that a person with a high level of psychological anxiety is less likely to be a stable group in the perceived social insecurity. But a high level of social insecurity perception is relatively combined with high level of psychological anxiety. Social insecurity perception are influenced by high level of burden of caring and preparing for retirement, subjective socioeconomic status, and economic difficulties. As the coping mechanisms, the level of social participation and the size of social support network are effective on the social insecurity perception. Compared to other age groups, the group aged 45-64 has a higher rate of using professional services such as psychological counseling. In closing, implications for social policy are summarized and research planning for fifth year study are introduced.