저소득 근로자 지원정책의 실효성 분석 - 실업보험, EITC, 최저임금제, 기초생활보장제도 상호 비교 -

This paper addresses the effectiveness of the social welfare policies, such as the unemployment insurance (UI), the earned income tax credit (EITC),the minimum living standard security system (MLSS), and the minimum wage, in improving the welfare of the low-income workers, using a general equilibrium model, which reflects separation of labor market between skilled workers and unskilled workers, the liquidity constraint, the unemployment risks, and the moral hazard of low-income workers. It is shown that the EITC is a relatively effective policy to improve the low-income workers’welfare, compared with the MLSS, which causes large welfare cost of middle-and-high-income workers and the distortion of macroeconomic variables, the minimum wage, which causes the involuntary unemployment of the unskilled workers and lowers their welfare level, and the UI, which covers the middle-and-high-income workers as well as the low-income workers, which indicates that the substantial distortion of resource allocation is inevitable in order for the UI to substantially improves the welfare of the low income workers. The relative effectiveness of the EITC is due to: (i) the EITC mainly covers the low-income workers, requiring limited fund for the policy implementation; (ii) it provides benefits only to the employed, which can minimize the moral hazard of workers, the distortion of resource allocation, and the welfare cost of middle-and-high-income workers; and (iii) it improves the distribution of disposable income, consumption and asset holdings.