Gyeonggi-do Residents’ Hopes for the Year 2017: Health, Economic Recovery and Enhanced Housing Welfare

Many Residents Hope for Improved Health> Winning the Lottery> Peace of Mind> Decreased Household Debts The residents of Gyeonggi-do mentioned an improved health for their families, economic recovery and enhanced housing welfare as their greatest hopes for the new year. Particularly, 7 out of 10 respondents said that their individual wishes can come true, which shows that they have a generally positive outlook. (Courtesy of the Gyeonggi G News.)

The residents of Gyeonggi-do mentioned an improved health for their families, economic recovery and enhanced housing welfare as their greatest hopes for the new year. Particularly, 7 out of 10 respondents said that their individual wishes can come true, which shows that they have a generally positive outlook.

The Gyeonggi Research Institute published a research report entitled “Gyeonggi-do Residents’ Hopes for 2017″ based on a social awareness survey (mobile questionnaire, reliability 95%, margin of error within ± 3.10%) conducted last December to 1,000 adults living in the province.

According to the report, the highest rate (14.2 %) of respondents mentioned an improved health as their greatest personal hope for the new year, which was followed by winning the lottery (8.8 %), peace of mind and stress-free life (8.3 %), decreased personal and household debt (6.8 %) and travel on their own or with their family (6.6 %).

Their greatest hope toward society was economic recovery (19.2 %), followed by the realization of just politics (17.7 %), stabilization of the housing market (houses, annual and monthly rent fees) (6.9 %), job creation (5.5 %) and the solution to the unemployment problem (5.5 %).

The institute analyzed that the high interests in reducing personal and household debts and winning lotteries, which are “recessionary products,” show the influence of the economic depression due to low growth on residents’ lives and that the economic insecurity caused by the highest level of household debts and recession seems to have affected the respondents hope for economic recovery.

Meanwhile, the Gyeonggi-do news reports that the news residents want to hear this year were those related to an enhanced and stabilized housing welfare for the middle class (14.1 %), the rectitude of government officials (9.7 %), lowered education expenses (8.8 %) and the creation of more jobs (8.8 %). Also, the residents mentioned welfare (19.7%), urban housing (11.7%), employment (9.9%) and industry and economy (8.8%) as the areas that the policies of the province must be focused on.

As for the possibility of the realization of these wishes, the majority of the respondents (69.4%) showed a positive outlook.

“It is necessary to review the policies on these issues because it is predominantly forecast that the economy will be hurt in 2017 due to the slowdown in economic growth caused by the domestic political unrest and delayed economic recovery,” said Yu Yeong-seong, the Research Planning Director of the institute. “It is expected that the promotion of personal and family health will become the main concern of the Gyeonggi-do residents in the new year. So it is needed to establish measures to meet their demands,” he added.

Based on the results of the survey, Yu proposed 2017’s five major tasks for the province as follows: the realization of social integration through a mature local autonomy; the establishment of measures for small business, youth unemployment solution and decreasing household debt; the rental housing policy shift from public rental housing to public interest housing; the operation of the tram and realization of zero transfer loss burden charge; the provision of the site-centered health care service and environmental autonomy bases which are independent of the central government; the securing of growth power in the northern Gyeonggi region and preparation for the changes in inter-Korean relations.

In addition, he also stressed that the Gyeonggi-do Province should assess the welfare policies for different age groups that it has implemented and review the present policies to identify which are needed to be expanded or abolished through short-term monitoring.