Cohort Divides in Welfare Attitudes: Spending Preferences, Tax Willingness, and Their Diverging Trajectories in South Korea (2019–2025)

ABSTRACT

This study examines inter‐cohort differences in welfare spending preferences and welfare tax willingness in South Korea, and how these differences evolved across three time points (2019, 2022, 2025), using supplementary welfare attitude survey data from the Korea Welfare Panel Study. Employing pooled ordinal logistic regression and OLS regression with cohort‐by‐year interaction terms, findings reveal that younger birth‐cohort groups consistently show lower welfare spending preferences, while cohort‐by‐year interactions remain limited to selected domains for Generation Z. For welfare tax willingness, however, inter‐cohort divergence is substantially more pronounced and persistent: Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z exhibited significantly declining tax willingness relative to the Senior Generation, with Millennials and Generation Z continuing this trajectory through 2025. These results suggest that an inconsistent attitudinal structure—selectively embracing welfare benefits while resisting fiscal contributions—appears to be deepening among younger birth‐cohort groups, as inferred from pooled cross‐wave comparisons of group‐level averages across separately estimated models, rather than from individual‐level longitudinal tracking or a directly measured within‐person association between spending and tax attitudes; the mechanisms underlying this aggregate‐level pattern warrant further investigation, and it poses structural challenges to the political sustainability of the South Korean welfare state.