가난은 숨지 않는다 [아침햇발]

In Korean society, poverty means something very tangible. If you translate the everyday language of people living in poverty straight into Korean, it looks like this. "Even if your bag and shoes fall off, you still tie them tightly. You're in pain. You cut back on living expenses. I bought school supplies as a graduation gift. When income came in, I treated my kids and the family to chicken.

We've always been short on money, so I rarely get enough sleep." "The market side dishes are too stingy, five thousand won for one serving is a lot. I have to eat the side dishes sparingly, until the 20th. I'm buying winter pants and a jacket for the first time in five years. Do I really have to freeze my waistband? Constantly feeling down."

(Result of 2025 Basic Living Assistance Distribution Family Income Survey and Announcement of Policy Improvement Measures) The government calculates the hardships and sacrifices of impoverished individuals. They start by setting a benchmark value for the middle-income standard, called the "middle-income minimum wage," on August 1st each year.

This "lowest standard of welfare" is the basis for determining the recipients of 14 agencies and over 80 welfare programs' payments. If the middle-income standard is lower than actual national income, impoverished individuals are excluded from receiving assistance, and those already receiving assistance have lower benefits. The Household Finance Welfare Survey by the National Data & Finance Welfare Office reflects actual national income, but the benchmark middle-income standard applied based on this value has a three-year lag.

The middle-income office has been criticized for arbitrarily applying a correction ratio to lower the middle-income standard. Last month, they announced a new application ratio: "Applying the most recent three-year increase in middle-income versus the current middle-income, while incorporating other major social and economic indicators such as the latest consumer price index and real economic growth rate."

We know exactly how ambiguous that single character '등' can be, learned from the controversy over jurisdictional investigations. With the new calculation method, the middle-income standard for 2027 is set at 273 million won for a single person, and 692 million won for a household of four. The government boasted a "6.70% record increase," but this is deceptive.

The truth is that the welfare baseline does not even reflect the change in income levels from 2024. The complex system for determining assistance amounts based on the middle-income standard is longer than 20 pages of A4 paper. In essence, the income of recipients is taxed, while assets such as savings, properties, and cars are disproportionately converted into income for the assistance amount.

Meanwhile, the payment amounts are far too low to meet the recipients' actual needs. The result of this system is designed to achieve the "minimal welfare for the minimal number of people." "Living assistance is limited to households with a middle-income standard below 32% of the benchmark middle-income, medical assistance below 40%, housing assistance below 48%, and education assistance below 50%."

In 2027, the living assistance amount for a single person group, based on the middle-income standard of 273 million won, would be 87 million won if the income qualification was 50 million won. This means the government would pay the difference of 37 million won. The poverty gap between the government's calculated poverty and actual poverty can be seen in these numbers.

The Basic Living Assistance Law itself is a joint effort, but it fails to narrow the gap between the middle-income standard and actual poverty. By failing to adjust the middle-income standard and raise medical and living assistance for some, it leaves a blatant gap in a policy designed to address poverty. What is needed now is not an artificial intelligence to find the impoverished, but a political decision to change welfare policies that do not call poverty "poverty."