Gyeonggi Province's Disaster Basic Income and Local Currency Policy Presented at American Society for Public Administration

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Park No-hun] Gyeonggi Province introduced its basic income policies including disaster basic income and local currency at the "2021 American Society for Public Administration (ASPA)."

Heo Seung-beom, Policy Planning Director of Gyeonggi Province, presented on "Basic Income and Local Currency as Answers to Overcoming COVID-19 Disasters" at 8 p.m. local time on April 14 at the "2021 ASPA Korea Public Administration Session (SKPA)," which was held online over three days from April 13 to 15.

Heo Seung-beom explained the background of Gyeonggi Province's disaster basic income payments and revealed the psychological and economic effectiveness demonstrated through the disaster basic income payments.

"The disaster basic income provided by Gyeonggi Province to overcome the urgent economic crisis caused by COVID-19 generated an additional consumption effect of 1.85 times the payment amount," Heo said, emphasizing that "this high policy effectiveness was possible because, unlike disaster relief payments in other countries, it was paid in local currency with restricted periods and usage areas rather than in cash."

He added, "Gyeonggi Province's disaster basic income payments played a key role in leading the government's universal disaster relief payments, and as a result, it can be evaluated as having played a significant role in the Republic of Korea being selected as the number one prospect for economic growth rate in 2020 among 37 OECD countries in the '2020 OECD Korea Economic Outlook Report.'"

The conference featured presentations by Professor Kim Ran and Professor Shin Hyun-jae from Seoul National University, Professor Kim Do-hyung from the University of Texas, and others, presenting various innovative administrative cases in response to social changes caused by COVID-19.

Previously, major overseas media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Taiwan's ET Today, and Japan's Nikkei Newspaper have reported on the economic effectiveness of "Gyeonggi Province's Disaster Basic Income."

Gyeonggi Province presented "Welfare-Oriented Economic Policy Gyeonggi Province Basic Income" at the "Indonesia Basic Income Conference" in January, and plans to present a case study of Gyeonggi Province's rural basic income pilot project at the "American Basic Income Experiment Academic Conference" in June, forming a global consensus on basic income through the sharing of basic income policy cases and drawing concentrated attention.

Heo Seung-beom said, "Gyeonggi Province is taking a step further by preparing rural basic income pilot projects and farmer basic income payments to conduct more in-depth effectiveness analysis and identify supplementary measures regarding basic income. This will serve as an important foundation on the path toward universal basic income for the stable and basic dignified lives of future generations."