Ministry of Health and Welfare to Increase 'Self-Sufficiency Benefits' by 2.1% Starting March

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 27th that it will increase the self-support allowance by 2.1% from next month compared to the previous rate.

The self-support work program is part of the National Basic Livelihood Security System, providing self-support jobs to basic livelihood recipients with work ability, such as livelihood benefit recipients, and the near-poor class, and paying self-support allowances based on work to support exit from benefits and independence.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare previously raised the self-support allowance by 3% in August last year as part of the livelihood stabilization measures, and decided on an additional increase this time reflecting last year's inflation rate (5.1%).

This year, about 66,000 people are eligible for the self-support work program. With this increase in the self-support allowance, the amount participants actually receive is expected to rise by a total of about 5.1% compared to January last year.

Jung Chung-hyun, Director of Welfare Policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, "The self-support program is a system that supports vulnerable groups to exit benefit receipt through work, and we expect that this allowance increase will somewhat ease the living expenses burden of self-support participants." He added, "We will continue to review various institutional improvement measures, such as discovering new self-support jobs, to support the independence of low-income groups."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.