Attitudes Toward Welfare Expansion with a Tax Increase in South Korea

While large-scale social program expansions are under way in many Asian countries, fiscal sustainability to fund those programs is in question. Despite the common belief that people are unwilling to pay more taxes, a considerable number of people support the expansion even with tax increases in these countries. Nonetheless, the determinants of this attitude have not been well understood. We examine this question using the case of South Korea. Analyzing a nationally representative sample, we find that besides conservatives, the resistance to the social service expansion with a tax increase is driven by the politically independent, middle-income class.