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Alaska Permanent Fund DividendThe Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend program was created by state legislation in 1980 to share the wealth of the Alaska Permanent Fund with the people of Alaska. The original program was to give each adult Alaska resident $50 for each year of residency, but this was challenged in court by Ron Zobel and payments were put on hold. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the program unconstitutional, and the legislature authorized equal dividend payments to all people who had lived in Alaska at least six months. In 1989, the Legislature changed the residency requirement to 24 months, but that was challenged in court and dropped to one calendar year, which is still in effect. The first dividend payment was $1,000 per person. The next year, the payment dropped to $386.15 and fell to an all-time low of $331.39 in 1984. It climbed the next year to $404.00 and enjoyed fairly steady growth to peak of $1963.86 per person in 2000. Low oil prices and a stock market recession caused the dividend to drop to $919.84 in 2004. The 2005 amounts will be announced in October. The dividend payments are based on a five-year average of the Permanent Fund's earnings, which helps to stabilize the dividends as the stock market and oil market changes from year to year. The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation has pushed in recent years for a change in the fund's management style to a Percent of Market Value approach, which is used by many other trust fund management agencies. Changing the fund's management approach requires a state constitutional amendment. This will also affect how dividends are calculated and is a subject of controversy in Alaskan politics. (See the article on the Alaska Permanent Fund.) See Also: - The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation webpage http://www.apfc.org
- The State of Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend Division webpage http://www.pfd.state.ak.us/
- Previous Dividend Amounts http://www.pfd.state.ak.us/dividendamounts/index.aspx
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