With social changes, loneliness is drawing increasing attention as a new social risk factor. In 2018, the UK established the “Ministry of Loneliness,” the first-ever of its kind in the world, with the head of the “Department for Culture, Media, and Sport doubling up as the minister, and announced a 5-year strategic plan for “A Connected Society.” The plan sets out three goals: “reducing the stigma attached to loneliness”; “inspiring societal change”; and “building up the understanding and evidence base of loneliness”. The principles that guided the development of this plan are: “working in partnership” with stakeholders; “a willingness to examine, iterate, and learn”; “ensuring a truly cross-cutting and cross-departmental approach”; “focusing on the key trigger points, alongside preventive action”; and “recognizing the importance of personalized approaches and local solutions.” The UK government is at work monitoring the plan’s implementation and publishing an annual report on the outcomes, while also continuing with public awareness campaigns and “social prescribing.” This article examines the responses the UK government has instituted in response to the problem of loneliness and discusses the policy implications they might have for Korea.

As social awareness grows of loneliness and its adverse and grave impact, some countries have recognized it as a social risk and have taken actions from various angles to address it. Germany, in particular, has drawn attention with its Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth recently initiating efforts to implement its “Strategy against Loneliness.” This article explores the current state of loneliness in Germany, as well as the features and components of the Strategy against Loneliness.

Finland has taken policy actions targeting “socially excluded young people” ― youth who live in isolation or withdrawal from social interactions. The Finnish youth law stipulates that to prevent young people from social exclusion, local governments should undertake outreach youth work with the involvement of youth workers. The outreach youth work project is designed to serve young people under 29 years of age who are not in employment, education, or receiving any social services or welfare benefits, helping them integrate into society and prepare for their future. The Finnish government, with the Ministry of Education and Culture at the forefront, has been actively expanding the outreach youth work initiative to a nationwide scale. On the other hand, various educational institutions and private-sector organizations have independently provided education and training programs aimed at developing the workforce necessary to implement the project.

This article examines Japan’s youth issues centering around “hikikomori,” the current state of social isolation among youth, and the measures taken in response. While Japan, since relatively early on, has taken numerous measures―among them the “hikikomori interventions”―to address the issues of youth employment and youth social isolation and, in 2021, has embarked on government-led strategies for addressing loneliness and social isolation, there is still a need for a wide-ranging and fundamental approach to addressing the social isolation that stems from social institutions such as education, employment, family, and welfare.

In this article, I conducted a comparative analysis of the post-Covid-19 pandemic experiences among older adults in Korea and Europe, focusing on employment, social relationships, and mental health status. The adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the employment status of older adults were more pronounced in southern European countries than in Nordic European countries and Korea. In the wake of the pandemic, older adults in Korea exhibited a tendency to limit their social interactions, albeit to a lesser extent than their counterparts in European countries. Older adults in Korea reported experiencing more frequent feelings of loneliness, resulting in a lower self-rated mental health level.

France, the UK, and Japan, four countries where population aging has been underway since early on, suggests that as their population aging progressed, public social expenditures increased significantly and economic growth declined, thereby deteriorating the national fiscal condition. While different countries may adopt distinct strategies for public social expenditures, it is common to them all that they must finance these expenditures through tax revenues, social insurance contributions, and deficit spending. The four countries examined trended toward increased tax revenues coinciding with decreased social insurance contributions, or vice versa. It is noteworthy that a substantial government debt could slow economic growth and, furthermore, erode the tax base and social insurance financing. As Korea anticipates its 65-and-older population reaching 20 percent of the national population in just two years, now is the time for the country to start in earnest with the development of strategic approaches to social expenditures and determine an optimal mix of financial sources.

In a move questioning the sustainability of the growth-centered capitalist mode of production, New Zealand officially named its national budget the Wellbeing Budget, which marks the first instance of any nation taking such action. This article examines New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget in terms of framework, wellbeing indicators, the goals and items that it consists of, what changes it has brought to government spending, the values it imparts to social welfare, and the outlook it has for future budgeting. The naming in itself, an official manifestation, in a way, of the notion that the national budget in its essence and purpose is less about pursuing growth and more about making people happier, is an achievement enough to merit high regard for having made fundamental perspectival changes to approaches to national budgeting. It is time to assess how significantly the Wellbeing Budget has changed the lives of people in New Zealand. New Zealand's actions may provide implications for the Korean welfare state, which lacks a link between fiscal policy and quality of life indicators.