Issues associated with the use of National Health Insurance contributions in determining public policy program beneficiaries

ABSTRACT Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers agree that the eligibility criteria used for determining welfare benefit recipients must be efficient, equitable, and possess few measurement errors. This study analyzes Korea’s system of using contributions to the National Health Insurance as an eligibility criterion for determining welfare benefit recipients and evaluates whether the system has these aforementioned characteristics, using the case of the COVID-19 stimulus payment distributed in the city of Jeonju. The analysis shows that while the system is favorable from an efficiency perspective, it is less desirable in terms of the other two characteristics. Based on the findings, this study proposes using tax return and employment insurance data, as such databases can help solve the equity and measurement error issues associated with the use of the current system.