With the enforcement of the long term care Insurance, which the government and the
public pay together for care-giving of the elderly, official care-giving services in Korea was
enacted. Nevertheless, because the official services are insufficient in comparison with the
increasing needs for long term care, unofficial care service is still considered as a important
portion in elderly care. Moreover, the long term care Insurance of Korea is based on the
principle of ‘home-based service’ that informal sector is necessary in caring for the
elderly, yet the support system involving informal sector is not firmly established. In this
background, this study aims to compare policies for informal sector in care services for the
elderly by types of welfare states, in order to provide proper future policy suggestions for
the home-based caring for elderly in Korea.
The results of this study can be summarized as followings; First, there are significant
differences in policies for unofficial sector among the different types of welfare states. The
countries being classified into the ‘means-test’ or sometimes called ‘Beveridge-model’,
provides official services under the scheme of regimented supervision on use of benefit on
unofficial service. On the contrary, the northern European countries, being classified into the
northern European subsidiarity model, also provide benefit but do not restrict its use for
unofficial care. Second, there were differences in policies for unofficial sector by societal
perspective. Feminist country recognizes financial value of female labor forces and arranges
formal support system for the unofficial care-givers, while the familistic country takes a
complementary role on care giving and does not provide benefits for unofficial care giving.
Third, there can be policy alternatives that reduce care service expenditure by focusing
on demands of unofficial service. Korea has a familism tradition but provides a few policies
for the unofficial care-giving and trys to decrease the benefits on unofficial care. In this
situation, unofficial care-givers nowadays are suffered by financial and physical matters.
Therefore, support system for the unofficial care-givers is needed, such as consultation,
education, and so on.