The purpose of this paper is to get some policy implication by comparing the analysis of the actual conditions of inequality by income sources, schooling and age about the time of foreign currency crisis (1996, 2000, 2003) to foreign countries regarding the polarization and distribution problem as hot issues emerging in Korea. According to the result of analysis, first, all indicators of inequality continue to deteriorate from foreign currency crisis up to now. Second, what leads to this
deterioration is wages. Tax and social security contribution has little effect on the improvement of total degree of inequality, though bettering income redistribution a little bit. Third, the aggravation of inequality coming from increase of income gap by schooling shows us that schooling effect getting important more and more. The result of inequality analysis by age tells us that the inequality among people over 60 is worse relatively than European countries.These results mean that government must intervene more to improve distribution problem. Concretely saying, we need to reinforce the function
of income redistribution using tax and social security contribution and systematize and expand social welfare institution, which is public transfer income. The percentage of public transfer income out of a disposable income in Korea is much smaller than foreign countries, and especially high income inequality among the old who have low working ability needs us to make up for income security system for the old. Finally increasing income inequality at present by wage inequality suggests that we need to protect irregular workers and strengthen the regulation of discrimination prevention in order to make better the inequality of market income.
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