South Korea ranked lowest among OECD member countries in social welfare spending in 2014, according to data compiled from the Korean government and OECD reports.
Of the 28 OECD members (six were excluded for lack of data), South Korea took last place, with a social welfare expenditure to GDP ratio of 10.4 percent.
This is less than half the OECD average (21.6 percent), and not even a third of the countries at the top of the list such as France (31.9 percent) and Finland (31 percent).
This indicates that Korea not only has a low level of social welfare but also lower individual tax burdens, experts said. South Korea’s ratio of welfare expenditure to GDP rose from 4.8 percent in 2000 to 9 percent in 2010, and hit 10.2 percent in 2013.
