Income-led growth is at the core of the Moon Jae-in administration’s economic policy. It aims to build an inclusive economy by enhancing the capacity of household consumption and improving distribution, through a more active role of the state and social agreements. This report laregely reviews what the Moon administration’s income-led growth has achieved and has not, as of the end of 2019 (due to the data availability). The reader is advised to keep in mind that the administration had been in two and a half years into the 5-year term by the end of 2019, and the growth effect may take a longer time to realize. The main goal of this interim review is to share the rare case of the income-led growth policies with the policy research circles abroad.

After an introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 applies the approach of Hein and Vogel (2008) to Korea, to have an idea of the growth regime of the Korean economy. An economy is said to be in a wage-led (profit-led, respectively) growth regime if the aggregate demand increases (decreases, respectively) with labor income share. Because the self-employed takes a large share of the labor force in Korea, the chapter uses adjusted measures of labor income share, following Jeon and Joo (2015, 2018). The empirical evidence indicates that the Korean economy is in a wage-led growth regime, at least since the currency crisis in late 1990s. This is largely because consumption is more sensitive than investment or net export to labor income share, and this sensitivity has become stronger after the currency crisis. This finding suggests that the main cause of the post-crisis slowdown in Korea is the concurrent decline in labor income share. This supports the relevance of the Moon administration's income-led growth strategy, which can be interpreted as an attempt to improve the factor income distribution.

Chapter 3 outlines the directions and contents of the Moon administration’s income-led growth policies. It introduces the virtuous circle that the income-led growth aims at creating, consisting of increase in decent jobs, increase in the household income, enhancement of the household’s capacity for consumption and economic growth. The chapter introduces a detailed structure of this circle, the three pillars of the income-led growth, namely increasing household income, reducing household expenses and expanding welfare and safety net, and the composition of the detailed policies aimed at achieving each of them. It also points out the shortcomings of the current structure and composition. Moreover, it discusses the relationship between the income-led growth and the two other directions of the Moon administration’s economic policy, namely innovative growth and fair economy.consumption