receive the Government's welfare benefits is as high as 79.75%, and child poverty rate among single-parent families and grandparent-grandchild families is 63.54%, which compares to the rate of 3.22% among twoparent families. These figures suggest that the Government needs to take a multi-dimensional approach to reduce poverty among the households with children. 85. Child poverty rate in the ROK is lower than the average rate among the 29 OECD member states, but this rate has decreased at a very slow pace in the past decade. The ROK has not introduced a separate social allowance for children, and has made policy efforts to address child poverty within the framework of the public assistance scheme called the NBLS. However, it is pointed out that the NBLS scheme does not take into account the peculiar nature of households with children, except that it has abolished the family responsibility criterion only in education benefits. Question suggested 86. Please specify whether the Government has set up strategic actions and objectives for different phases to reduce child poverty and whether it has a plan to improve the NBLS scheme by considering the features of households with children in this scheme. Issue 16: Right to Housing (Homelessness and Forced Evictions) Current status 87. The Government stated, in its current State Report, that it was committed to promoting the rent assistance programme and the multi-household residence rental programme to ensure housing security for vulnerable groups. However, the rent assistance programme is limited only to the group just above the poverty line in some local governments, providing no benefit to the socially vulnerable groups who live in dosshouse (jjokbang) or in vinyl houses. 88. In addition, the number of households which do not meet the minimum housing standards, although on the decline now, is likely to increase, because it is expected that the numbers of old people in poverty and single senior households will surge in the near future. Considering that more than 1 million households fail to meet the minimum housing standards, even though the number is decreasing, it is necessary to take particular actions about these households. Trends in the number of households below minimum housing standards (%: of total households) Year 2005 2010 2012 2014 Number of households below the standards 2.68 million (16.5%) 1.84 million (10.6%) 1.28 million (7.2%) 1 million (5.4%) (Source: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Korea Housing Survey (2010, 2012 and 2014)) 89. With regard to forced eviction, the Government stated, in its current State Report that tenants are offered the moving cost and those who are evicted from the houses to be demolished for redevelopment purpose are provided with temporary residences. However, this is simply what is described in the law and regulations and, in practice, these schemes are not properly working to provide substantial housing security to vulnerable groups. For instance, the Korea Workers’ Compensational & Welfare Service has built apartment houses exclusively for working women in order to promote their self-support, but some low- 21 / 25