Alaska’s Cash Giveaway Climbs to $708 for Every Resident in ’87

Alaska Thursday announced that its annual cash giveaway, in which every man, woman and child in the state receives a government check just for living there, will amount to $708.19 a person this year.

In all, more than $378.5 million in the share-the-oil-wealth program will be distributed to all permanent residents of Alaska, Colleen Brown, spokeswoman for the state Revenue Department, said.

The state received 534,495 applications for the payments, but there are always thousands of applicants found to be ineligible, usually because they did not meet the permanent resident rule. It requires residency during the previous six months of winter, from Oct. 1 through March 31, plus a pledge to stay in the state.

The checks are substantially higher than last year’s $556.19 and are far above the $404 checks mailed out two years ago. This is the sixth year that the state has mailed money to its residents.

Brown said the first checks will be printed this weekend and will start going out early next week at the rate of 50,000 a week, until everyone has been paid, probably by Christmas.

The money represents earnings of the state’s savings account, known as the Permanent Fund. Alaska, preparing for the day when its oil runs out, puts at least 25% of all oil earnings into the fund, which now totals more than $8.9 billion. Half of the fund’s earnings each year become Permanent Fund dividends paid to the people.