The government introduced the welfare to work policy (WWP) along with the public assistance scheme in 2000 and has reorganised it in 2009 by adopting new workfare programmes. The scale of the WWP has also grown consistently after the reform: the budget for the WWP has soared by 23.0% over the last five years (from 325.8 billion won in 2009 to 742.3 billion won in 2013), and the number of participants has increased by 11.6% for three years (from 84,757 people in 2009 to 105,532 people in 2011). Nevertheless, the poor performance and ambiguous goals of the policy have been persistently pointed out as the main challenges of the WWP.
    This paper analyses how the WWP has functioned as the workfare scheme for public assistance beneficiaries and contributed to the society as one of the active labour market policies for low-income people overall. In order to examine the WWP, this report looks into government statistics on WWP recipients from 2009 to 2011 and tries to keep track of housing provision, which encourages WWP receivers to seek their job in the regular labour market rather than to depend on the public assistance scheme.
    The evaluation finds that the efficiency of the programme is deteriorating and recipients cannot make their living through WWP. Furthermore, the comparison of various WWP programs is almost impossible because evaluation and statistics management systems are operated by two separate ministries: The Ministry of Health and Welfare and The Ministry of Employment and Labour.
    Consequently, the government needs to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the WWP through several action plans: establishing clear policy goals, complementing performance evaluation, integrating statistics management between ministries, and creating additional benefits for recipients who are relieved from the public assistance scheme via the WWP.

Lee Chaejeong