Health ministry launches task force to audit 80 welfare programmes

The health ministry said Monday it has launched a task force to examine welfare programmes scattered across government departments, opening the review with a focus on the median-income benchmark that 80 welfare schemes use to select recipients.

The Future-Response Social Safety Net Innovation Task Force held its first meeting at the government complex in Sejong, chaired by Hyun Soo-yup, the ministry's first deputy minister. Nine ministries that run major welfare programmes are taking part, among them the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Ministry of Education, alongside the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, the Korea Institute of Public Finance, the Korea Labor Institute and outside academics.

At the centre of the review is the median-income standard. The government raised the benchmark in July for a third consecutive year, to its highest level on record, as a response to widening inequality and the strain on low-income households.

The task force will analyse how that increase affects welfare finances, and map where the programmes sit across income brackets, social risks, needs and life stages, looking for gaps between schemes and overlapping areas that are difficult to see when each programme is reviewed on its own. It will also examine whether welfare spending reaches people effectively, and whether the delivery system itself creates problems.

The review is prompted by the growing economic vulnerability of non-standard workers and low-income households, as sweeping changes in artificial intelligence, industrial structure and the labour market widen gaps in income and assets. A system built on after-the-fact minimum subsistence guarantees and fragmented programmes has limits in responding to that polarisation.

"This is meaningful work that examines existing welfare programmes from an integrated perspective, crossing the walls between ministries," Hyun said. "We will seek ways to connect welfare programmes organically and divide roles appropriately so that, in the end, we can achieve a safety net without gaps."

The task force is meant to prevent working-poor and near-poor households from falling into poverty by re-examining the social safety net and drawing up measures to reduce institutional blind spots.