Poor Account for 10 Percent of Total Population

Dong-A Ilbo has exclusively obtained the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s report titled “Research on the Condition on the Poor and the Less Poor” on November 10. The report indicates that the beneficiaries of the National Basic Livelihood Security Act--whose monthly income is less than the minimum cost of living (1,060,000 won a month for a four-member family)--and the less poor whose monthly incomes are 100~120 percent of the minimum cost of living, account for 10.4 percent (or 4,945,335) of the total population.

In particular, the number of those whose income is less than the minimum cost of living is 8.07 percent, or 3,845,770.

The report is based on a nationwide survey conducted from January 2003 to August 2004 and was submitted to Congresswoman Ahn Myeong-ok (GNP) of the Health and Welfare Committee. Until now, reports estimating the number of the poor have been made, but they were only using figures from the Korea National Statistical Office, which makes this report by the Ministry of Health and Welfare the first official figure directly surveyed and made by the government ministry itself.

The “less poor” refers to those who are “potentially poor” with 100-120 percent monthly income of the minimum cost of living, and those whose incomes are less than the minimum cost of living with their own assets (38 million won in the metropolis, 31 million won in small and medium sized cities, and 29 million won in farming and fishing villages), and thus do not receive aid from the National Basic Livelihood Security Act.

The report says that the number of potentially poor is 1,099,565 (or 2.29 percent), the number of the less poor but non-beneficiaries is 2,486,808 (or 5.22 percent), and the number of the beneficiaries of the National Basic Livelihood Security Act is 1,358,962 (or 2.85 percent).

Also, according to the number of those who have failed to pay regional insurance for more than three months, which has often been used for calculating the number of the poor, the figure dropped to 1.36 million households in 2002 from 1.61 million households in 2001. But the number has increased to reach 1.56 million households in 2003, and now as of late August 2004, the figure has remarkably risen to 1.72 million households.

Indeed, local government public offices are receiving increasing requests to expand the scope of the poor and the less poor. Another method to measure the severity of the income unbalance shows the increase reaching 5.7 percent in first quarter of 2004, up from 5.25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003.

“The proportion of the poor went up during 1997 and 1998 after the financial crisis, but since then, it had shown signs of decreasing for a while. But from 2003, it began to go up again. As a background to this drop, the continuing economic slowdown is attributable to a series of bankruptcies of small businesses, which has made them day laborers or temporary workers,” Lee Hyun-ju, the head researcher of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs pointed out.

Soo-Jung Shin crystal@donga.com