The discussion of "new risk" in western countries in social policy arena started to gain attention from the late 1990s. Literature on post-industrialization and the new risk are based on studies regarding western welfare states and exclude Asian post-industrial societies. However, the process of deindustrialization in Asia has some different aspects then those of the western post-industrialized economies. Rapid economic development, the simultaneousness of deruralization, industrialization and deindustrializations, dramatic change in the family structure, the uniqueness of welfare state systems and the demographic change are a few among the many. Features of new risks in East Asian countries may be different or similar to the generally suggested new risk indicating new implications.

This study hypothesizes that the characteristics of new risk may vary in different post-industrial countries and examines the two Asian post-industrial economies. First, this paper commences its inquiry with a conceptualization of social risk with an attempt to critically rethink the argument of "new risk" and examines changes in the characteristics or aspects of social risk in Republic of Korea and Japan by adopting the concept of 'risk shift'. An innovative methodology fuzzy-set qualitative analysis (fs/QCA) is exploited to examine the risk shift from early 1980s to 2007. In sum, this paper aims to answer two questions: 1) What is new risk?, and 2) Are there new risk in Asian post-industrial countries, Rep. Korea and Japan? Secondary data from each countries governments and international organizations is used for the empirical analysis. Answering these questions contribute to the new risk discussion not only both theoretically and empirically but also methodologically.

Aims: To compare inequality in health status by education and occupational type among Korean women by applying different approaches of measuring socioeconomic position - individual, conventional, dominance, and joint classification approaches.

Methods: A nationally representative sample of 5813 women aged 30-64 from the 2005 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey was analyzed. Women were divided into two groups, employed women and homemakers. Self-rated health was used as the dependent variable. Education and Occupational type were used as socioeconomic position (SEP) indicators. Four approaches (individual, conventional, dominance, and joint classification) were applied to measure women's SEP. Age-adjusted prevalence of poor health status was calculated by using four approaches and compared between the employment status. Odds ratios (OR) and relative index of inequalities (RII) were calculated from logistic regressions.

Results: Prevalence of self-rated poor health was not different between employed women (58.2%) and homemakers (58.8%). However, disparities in health among employed women were higher than those in homemakers regardless of approaches to measure education and occupational types. RIIs of employed women (3.01) was higher than those of homemakers (2.07) when the individual approach to measure education was used. A lower proportion of women in high SEP among employed than homemakers seemed to explain this. We found that disparities were higher when we used the individual approach for measurement of education and conventional approach for measurement of occupation respectively.

Conclusions: Disparities in health among employed women were higher than those among homemakers regardless of measurement methods of education and occupational type. To avoid the dilution of the magnitude of inequalities among women, it is important to consider employment status.

This paper examines how the institutions of interest representation have affected the welfare state in post-democratization Korea. This paper argues that the interest articulation and aggregation of welfare issues have been severely limited in Korea, as the two pillars of interest representation in democratic capitalism, the political parties and social dialogue system, have malfunctioned. These flawed institutions hindered the development of comprehensive welfare state and contributed to the creation of a "hollow welfare state."

Full paper: Kim_Y-S_2009_institution_of_interest.pdf