Horacio Levy, Manos Matsaganis, and Holly Sutherland “Child Poverty Insights: Simulating the costs and benefits of a Europe-wide Basic Income scheme for Children”

UNICEF Policy and Strategy

SUMMARY: Basic Income for Children (BIC) is a universal income transfer unconditionally granted to all families with children, without means test or work requirement. The authors use the European tax-benefit micro simulation model to estimate the effects of their version of BIC. Their model computes tax liabilities and benefit entitlements for all households in European Union (EU) member states based on representative household survey data from each country. Fixing the poverty threshold at 60% of the median income, they find that a Europe-wide BIC-scheme not adjusted for price differences would reduce the number of children in poverty by 14.2% and the poverty gap by 6.2%. The scheme modeled  in the paper, paying €50 per month per child, would cost around €18 billion. That is approximately 13% of the current EU budget, or 0.15% of the combined GDP of all EU member states.

Horacio Levy, Manos Matsaganis, and Holly Sutherland “Child Poverty Insights: Simulating the costs and benefits of a Europe-wide Basic Income scheme for Children,” UNICEF Policy and Strategy, 2014.