United Kingdom: A podcast debate on basic income

United Kingdom: A podcast debate on basic income

Image credit to Nathaniel Houghton, on Medium.

The Guardian has published a podcast of a debate on Citizen’s Basic Income (start to listen at 16:00 minutes):

Could a universal basic income be a solution to precarious work, automation and a happy, healthier society? It has enthusiasts from Silicon Valley to the Labour party, but would it actually work?

We hear from Marjukka Turunen, from the Finnish welfare agency Kela in Helsinki, which is trialling a basic income scheme.

On the expert panel: Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, the Observer’s Sonia Sodha and the chair of CompassNeal Lawson.

Is a UK basic income pilot possible?

Is a UK basic income pilot possible?

This article is based on a research project conducted by a French student, Lucas Delattre, during the summer of 2016, and updated in October 2017

Introduction

A Citizen’s Basic Income is an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income paid to every individual as a right of citizenship.

In 2016, at a discussion on Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ book Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a world without work (Verso, 2015) at the New Economics Foundation, Ed Miliband was asked what needed to happen to move us towards the implementation of a Citizen’s Basic Income scheme. ‘A pilot project’ was the answer. Others have made the same suggestion.

Existing pilot projects

Many of the projects that have been claimed as Citizen’s Basic Income pilots do not satisfy the criteria of being universal, unconditional and based on the individual. Those that do pay unconditional incomes to individuals cannot be absolutely universal, since they necessarily exclude those outside the sample. This is also an ethical issue that cannot be avoided. And the short duration of most projects enables some short-term effects to be detected, but not long-run or life-time effects. (A project in Kenya is giving 23 US$ per month to 40 villages for 12 years, which is much longer than the two years for which most experiments run.)

Some projects call for volunteers, and so are unlikely to be representative. Mandatory involvement of a representative sample is to be preferred; and even better is a saturation sample, covering a defined geographical area, which can enable effects to be picked up at a local level. Projects that compare the experience of pilot groups that receive an unconditional income to the experience of control groups that do not are preferable to experiments that do not employ control groups.

In 2008 and 2009 a privately-financed pilot project was held in the small rural settlement of Otjivero-Omitara in Namibia. 100 Namibian dollars (£7) was paid each month to every member of the population for a period of two years, and significant results were achieved in relation to health, education, crime reduction, economic activity, and poverty reduction. There was no control group with which to compare these results.

Between 2011 and 2013, similar projects in India paid 300 rupees (£3) per month to every member of several pilot villages, and in India the impressive results obtained in the pilot project villages could be compared with those in the control villages.

The Alaskan Permanent Fund (APF) is a sovereign wealth fund based on Alaska’s oil revenues, and invested in the international stock market. It gives an annual dividend payment to every Alaskan citizen, who has been resident for at least a year in Alaska. The APF has usually been able to provide a dividend of between $1,000 and $2,000 each year. Obviously, it is annual and variable, and is not sufficient to take on the role of social security: but it has had beneficial effects on the population of Alaska.

A micro-level pilot project in Germany provides Citizen’s Basic Incomes to selected individuals for one year. In Finland, a random sample of 2,000 people aged 25-58, who were unemployed at the end of 2016, are receiving €560 per month Income for two years in place of existing benefits, and the sample subjects can keep their payments after they have found employment. However, while being based on the individual and unconditional, this does not fulfil the Citizen’s Basic Income criteria of being universal. A similar approach is being considered by some Dutch municipalities. The current experiment in Ontario, Canada, is a Guaranteed Minimum Income project where a means-tested household-based benefit targeted on subjects aged 18-64 is being tested.

The Negative Income Tax experiments in the USA and Canada during the 1970s were based on the household, and so did not fulfil the criteria as a Citizen’s Basic Income pilot projects.

None of this is to suggest that the projects that have been undertaken are not of value. They are. Valuable lessons have been learnt in Namibia, India, Alaska, and the various states in Canada and the USA where Negative Income Tax experiments have taken place; and additional useful lessons will be learnt in Berlin, in the Netherlands, and in Finland. But we still await a genuine Citizen’s Basic Income pilot project. It is arguable that the Indian and Namibian experiments were as near to genuine pilot projects as possible because they were of sufficient duration to enable trends in behavioural change to be evaluated and trajectories predicted.

The UK

Might it be possible to run a Citizen’s Basic Income pilot project in the UK? A genuine Citizen’s Basic Income pilot project? Multiple problems present themselves:

  • the project would have to be for a sufficiently long period for a sufficient number of assessments of behavioural change to be made to enable trajectories to be plotted and reliable estimates made of the likely behavioural changes that would accompany a permanent Citizen’s Basic Income scheme;
  • any Citizen’s Basic Income viable in the short to medium term in the UK (and in any developed country) would have to be funded wholly or in part by changing income tax and social insurance contribution levels and thresholds. So a genuine pilot project would require government departments to make those adjustments just for the individuals involved in the project, and to recycle the savings into pilot project participants’ Citizen’s Basic Incomes – a somewhat unlikely proposition;
  • the project would need to involve a cross-section of the population if it were to stand some chance of modelling a genuine Citizen’s Basic Income; and
  • because any revenue neutral or almost revenue neutral scheme would impose losses on some households (- preferably on households in the higher income deciles), some participants in the pilot project would lose disposable income at the point of implementation.

A feasible Citizen’s Basic Income experiment

What would be feasible would be to provide a genuine Citizen’s Basic Income to a small community on top of existing benefits provisions and without altering National Insurance contributions or Income Tax payments. This would avoid government departments having to change current tax and benefits provisions: but it would require additional funding and it would not mirror the tax and benefits changes that would be required to fund a genuine Citizen’s Basic Income. This is why I have called it an ‘experiment’ rather than a ‘pilot project’. Important lessons could be learnt: but nobody would be able to regard the experiment’s results as evidence for how a Citizen’s Basic Income would work in practice.

A further feasible option would be to give a Citizen’s Basic Income to all sixteen to eighteen year olds and not give them an Income Tax Personal Allowance. This approach would create minimal problems for the tax and benefits authorities and for employers, and it would result in almost no losses at the point of implementation. The important question would be whether to promise permanence – in which case it would be a genuine pilot project; or whether to limit the experiment to a stated number of years – in which case it would be an experiment. (Microsimulation research on such a pilot project/experiment can be found in a recent working paper. )

Rebalancing the mix of benefit systems

Rebalancing the mix of benefit systems

Most developed countries’ benefits systems exhibit a mixture of different kinds of benefits, and this is increasingly true of developing countries. Most run social insurance schemes of some kind (either government-run or organized by a trade union, employer, or independent organizations); most have a layer of means-tested benefits, and some have universal and unconditional benefits for certain demographic groups (usually elderly people and/or children). In the short to medium term, this is likely to remain the situation. This is both because complex systems tend to be path-dependent ( – that is, adapting an existing system is easier than starting from scratch), and because there are good reasons for all three kinds of benefits. Social insurance represents reciprocity, with a contribution record granting a right to receive benefits when certain contingencies arise; means-tested benefits recognize that a needs-based approach can be appropriate; unconditional benefits recognize our equal members of society and represent a solid financial platform on which families can build. Each of the three types exhibits both advantages and disadvantages, with perhaps means-tested benefits offering more disadvantages than advantages, and unconditional benefits more advantages than disadvantages, with social insurance somewhere in between.

So the question is rarely: How can we replace the current benefits system? It is usually: How should we rebalance this mixture? In the UK, and in the medium term, no viable Citizen’s Income scheme could entirely abolish means-tested benefits. The complexity of the current system means that levels of Citizen’s Incomes that could be funded by adapting the tax and benefits system would be too low to avoid losses for low-income households at the point of implementation unless means-tested benefits were left in place and recalculated.

Social insurance benefits (National Insurance benefits in the UK) are another question. If a Citizen’s Income scheme were to be implemented, would we wish to abolish National Insurance benefits? Even though they are not genuine social insurance benefits (there is no connection between the amounts collected and the amounts paid out; the Government can alter the rates and durations of benefits at whim), many older members of the public still have a soft spot for them. However, younger members of society do not, and don’t understand them either.

The propensity to manage change in an evolutionary fashion, by systematic demolition (that could be carried out by hiring firms such as prodanllc.com or alike) and building afresh, means that we are likely to see Citizen Incomes implemented alongside social insurance and means-tested benefits. This is not a problem: at least for the time being.

Thank you for reading…

A neoliberal Citizen’s Income?

A neoliberal Citizen’s Income?

An article by John Clarke, ‘Progressive Dreams Meet Neoliberal Realities’, poses an important question: Is it true that ‘we can draw a line between the models that are concerned with improving lives and raising living standards and those that are focused on intensifying the capacity for capitalist exploitation’?

First of all for some of the mistakes in the article. The ‘progressive’ camp is well described as offering a range of schemes that would be ‘responsibly redistributive, reduce poverty and inequality and ease up on bureaucratic intrusion’, and that would provide enough money to live on: but it is not true that those who propose schemes that would be ‘responsibly redistributive, reduce poverty and inequality and ease up on bureaucratic intrusion’ ‘pay great attention to explaining how nice their systems would be but give little if any thought to the concrete prospects of implementation’. Research published by the Institute for Social and Economic Research and by the Citizen’s Income Trust shows that schemes that would be ‘responsibly redistributive, reduce poverty and inequality and ease up on bureaucratic intrusion’ can be perfectly implementable.

A second mistake is to suggest that ‘there is a fight to be taken forward for living income, full entitlement and programs that meet the real needs of unemployed, poor and disabled people, as opposed to the present ‘rituals of degradation’ they embody.’ Unfortunately, it is precisely the fitting of benefits to needs that results in the ‘rituals of degradation’.

In the section of the article that matters, ‘Neoliberal version’, Clarke suggests that the motive underlying the schemes proposed by at least some of those governments proposing pilot projects is in fact the same as Charles Murray’s: the dismantling of all other welfare provision. He suggests that Citizen’s Income plans might be described with ‘progressive’ phrases, but their purpose is pernicious. He also suggests that Citizen’s Income proposals can provide cover for additional austerity within the current system; and that Citizen’s Income is being proposed in order to promote a more exploitative employment market.

In the section ‘Progressive Dreams’, Clarke suggests that ‘progressive’ versions of Citizen’s Income would be politically infeasible because they would tip the balance of power away from employers. He claims that it is neoliberal governments that seem to be interested in Citizen’s Income, suggesting that ‘progressive’ versions don’t stand a chance; that pursuing an infeasible Citizen’s Income might divert attention from tackling neoliberal depredations; and that Citizen’s Income would be an inadequate response to the problems facing our society. Clarke suggests that what we need is such public services as ‘free, massively expanded and fully accessible systems of healthcare and public transportation’, social housing, universal childcare, ‘living wages, workplace rights and real compensation for injured workers’.

Clarke’s final paragraph is worth quoting in full:

I am suggesting that our movements need to challenge, rather than come to terms with, the neoliberal order and the capitalist system that has produced it. For all its claims to be a sweeping measure, the notion of progressive BI is a futile attempt to make peace with that system. In reality, even that compromise is not available. The model of BI that governments are working on in their social policy laboratories will not ‘end the tyranny of the labour market’ but render it more dreadful. The agenda of austerity and privatization requires a system of income support that renders people as powerless and desperate as possible in the face of exploitation and that won’t change if it is relabelled as ‘Basic Income’.

The arguments need to be tackled one by one, starting with Charles Murray’s. Those who would like to replace public services such as healthcare with a Citizen’s Income confuse two different kinds of universality. The universality of healthcare must be one of availability, whereas the universality that characterises Citizen’s Income is one of provision. Whether healthcare is provided via the highly efficient NHS, or via an insurance system riddled with market failures, what individuals require is availability when it is needed, however much that costs. One person’s absorption of healthcare resources will be very different from another’s. Some people might spend months in hospital, and others might hardly ever see the inside of one: but they all need healthcare to be there when they need it. No standard amount of money can replace such a universality of availability. No doubt this argument will need to be made constantly. The important thing is that it is the only right argument and that it has to be made.

Some of Clarke’s other statements are genuine wake-up calls, and suggest that only Citizen’s Income schemes that do not impose losses at the point of implementation should be proposed. Similarly, nobody should be suggesting that a Citizen’s Income scheme could substitute for a National Minimum Wage or for a Living Wage. Citizen’s Income and a Living Wage would function very happily alongside each other, and would function far better than a Living Wage with a means-tested benefits system. Every time a Living Wage level is raised, means-tested in-work benefits fall, whereas this would not happen to a Citizen’s Income.

Some of Clarke’s arguments need to be tackled. No financially feasible Citizen’s Income would tip the balance of power very far away from employers and towards employees, if at all. Means-tested benefits function as dynamic subsidies – that is, they rise if wages fall – whereas Citizen’s Income functions as a static subsidy because it doesn’t rise if wages fall. Thus employers might experience more resistance if they attempt to cut wages. Also, because a Citizen’s Income might give to some employees more choice over employment patterns, and thus more ability to negotiate in the employment market, it might look as if the balance were shifting towards employees. However, because the overall effect would be to reduce the inefficiencies in the employment market, employers would find their firms becoming generally more efficient. This really could be a situation in which everyone wins.

No doubt some experiments are being conducted by neoliberal governments. This will not be a problem if researchers test the piloted schemes for household losses, and for changes in inequality and poverty. The best response, though, would be for governments across the political spectrum to research and pilot Citizen’s Income, and not to leave it to governments at only one end of it.

Finally, if universality and unconditionality are good for benefits systems, then they are good for everything else. The UK’s Sure Start childcare provision was designed to be universal, which removed the possibility of stigma. The NHS attracts no stigma, and it is highly efficient. Some services will need to be paid for, at least to some extent: experiments with free public transport can mean overloaded transport systems – but many public services are more efficient if free at the point of use. So far from Citizen’s Income being seen as a replacement for public services, it should be regarded as a default model for them unless proved otherwise.

As for Clarke’s final paragraph: let’s be realistic – the neoliberal age might be with us for some time to come, so what the situation requires is survival mechanisms and a modelling of how it might evolve to the benefit of people and planet. Citizen’s Income is precisely what is required. If Mr. Clarke would like to suggest a better alternative then we would be pleased to hear from him.

Behavioural Effects of a Citizen’s Income on wages, job security and labour supply

Behavioural Effects of a Citizen’s Income on wages, job security and labour supply

Written by: Anne Gray

Abstract.

What would be the effect of a citizen’s income (CI), aka basic income or BI, on wage levels – how would employers respond to its introduction? What would be its effect on the supply of labour, and on the total amount of paid work done in the economy? Would we still need a legally enforced minimum wage? This article explores the behavioural effects of a BI, on workers, jobseekers and employers. It first examines contrasting hypotheses as to the effects on wages and labour supply, then use official data to make a rough estimate of these effects for individuals in different socioeconomic and household circumstances. Analysis indicates that a Minimum Wage will remain essential after the introduction of a modest BI, to prevent the latter substituting for wages and job security, especially in the case of individuals in less advantaged circumstances.

Introduction

Frequently mentioned arguments for a BI include two different groups of incentive effects that can’t all take place at once for the same person or household. The first is the category of effects that increase labour supply to employers; that it would help people out of the ‘poverty trap’ and encourage them to get a job, or to move from part-time to full-time work. The second is the category of effects that would reduce labour supply to the market; that it would encourage shorter working hours and more leisure; that it would encourage some people to take time off work to study or to care for elderly loved ones or to do unpaid volunteer work. Which groups in the labour force would increase their ‘offer’ of work to the market and which would reduce it? Under what circumstances, and in response to what level of BI, would people work more, or work less ?

We are in the dark here for a number of reasons. Firstly, most previous experiences of anything like a BI have been in other countries, often in much poorer countries than the UK with much more self-employment – Brazil, India and Namibia to mention examples. The US and Canadian experiments of the 1970s were far from ‘universal’, all being a variant of income maintenance for previous welfare claimants only. All we have to go on to tell us what might be the labour market effects of BI are the responses of claimants and employers to previous benefit systems in the UK or in comparable European contexts, and informed guesses about what claimants and employers would do in response to a new type of benefit which has no very similar precedent in nature or scale.

The risk of BI reducing wage rates and job security

Benefit systems have in some instances been found in practice to lead to lower wage rates (Gray 2014). Among these examples, the oldest was the Speenhamland system of poor relief in the early nineteenth century (Polanyi 1957). More recently, lower wage rates, increased precarity and job splitting – leading to jobs with very short hours in place of the full time work that most jobseekers wanted – was an evidenced effect of the high ‘earnings disregard’ levels present in French, German and Belgian systems of unemployment benefit in the 1980s and early 1990s (Gray 2002, 2004). In the UK, Wilkinson (2001) found a ‘Speenhamland effect’ of Working Families Tax Credit. The same argument was made in relation to tax credits when they were first introduced (Bennett and Hirsch 2001). Since 2014, the UK government itself hinted that employers had taken advantage of tax credit, defending their 2015 plan to reduce tax credit allowances (later reversed, but only partly) by saying that ‘the tax credit system had, for too long, been used to subsidise low pay’ (BBC News, 15.9.15). This view was underlined by the statement that corporation tax was being cut to ‘introduce incentives for business to remove the need for tax credits with pay rises ‘ (George Osborne’s budget speech on 8.7.15).

Thus benefit systems that allow unemployed people to move into temporary employment like that offered by this denver staffing agency, without total loss of benefit, as in the examples above, can lead to reduced wages. With WFTC (and the later Working Tax Credit), when unemployed people got a job they re-applied for in-work benefits to partially replace their out-of-work benefits, whilst with Speenhamland and the continental disregards (Polanyi, op.cit; Gray 2002) they just kept some of the benefit they had whilst they were unemployed. Such systems, to a greater or lesser degree, alleviate the ‘poverty trap’ where almost 100% of benefits are lost on taking a job, as with JSA, discouraging employment. But unfortunately downward pressure on wage rates is an inevitable effect of allowing unemployed people to keep getting state money when they get a job, if that is all we do. If ending the ‘poverty trap’ persuades some unemployed people to take jobs they previously wouldn’t have accepted because the wage was too low, employers will then find it easier than before to recruit the numbers they want at a lower wage – unless a minimum wage law prevents this . In fact right wing writers (e.g. Friedman 1962, Parker 1989) have argued for BI precisely because it helps and encourages people to take low paid jobs. And if pay falls, it falls not just for those who may be desperate for any job, but for all those changing jobs – and possibly even for those in jobs and staying in the same workplace. Many recent press reports show how easy it is for employers to issue new, worse contracts in the current under-regulated, under-unionised environment. Some defenders of BI argue that if the BI was high enough, a minimum wage law would not be needed – and even that some element of ‘wage subsidy’ is beneficial because it would protect small businesses like rural shops. (Or, one might add, this would help socially important sectors currently placed in serious difficulty by the recent rise in the legal minimum wage, in particular social care). But pay would fall not just for small businesses (including small shops and care homes, which some people might want to have lower costs to prevent them from closing). It would fall for supermarket chains and other corporate giants as well. In any case there are alternative, more targeted, ways of helping small businesses or particular sectors – especially those where, as with social care, the public sector is the main customer.

Can we avoid the Speenhamland effect and the poverty trap with a single measure? Probably not , for two reasons, as follows. First of all there is the question of whether a BI would be affordable at a level high enough to enable people to refuse all jobs below whatever we consider to be a reasonable wage level. Secondly any measure which increases labour supply is likely to induce easier recruitment at low wages. BI removes the poverty trap for the unwaged, and many of their job applications are directed at low paid sectors. So BI on its own, even at a high level, is liable to induce wage freezing, or recruitment at lower than previous hourly rates, just as did tax credit and the continental high-disregard systems. This can be avoided by ensuring that employers are obliged by law to pay a minimum wage – as I argued in 2014, such a regulation is an important safeguard against the BI being use to benefit employers rather than employees.

However, also at stake are other aspects of labour standards, and these are at issue even with a very high level of BI. Guy Standing (1999) amongst others has argued that a BI is a good defence against precarity – in these days of widespread temporary jobs, zero hours contracts and part-time unemployment, it makes such conditions more tolerable and less exposed to poverty. But if such jobs become more tolerable, employers will find it easier to recruit to them. In effect, such employers would be using state funds as a subsidy to support their practice of laying off workers for the weeks or days they are not needed, rather than meeting the costs of continuous maintenance of their labour force as they do in long-term employment contracts with specified hours. Again repeating the argument of my 2014 paper, limiting the use of temporary labour, and in particular zero hours contracts, is an important form of regulation to prevent this. What is important here is the similarity between a BI and the high disregards in these French, Belgian and German benefit schemes, which did encourage the offer of temporary and ‘mini-jobs’. They were like a partial BI for the unemployed. To combat these effects of encouraging more precarity, alongside a BI we need regulation of zero hours and limitation of temporary work. This is essential if the BI is not to end up subsidising employers who show no long-term responsibility for training or supporting their workforce and want to turn labour supply on and off like a tap.

Moreover, the problems of precarity are not solved by a BI without other measures. A prospective landlord or mortgage company will be unimpressed by someone who doesn’t know whether next week’s income will be her wage for 40 hours (say £400) plus her £80 BI, or just her £80 BI. It is creditworthiness and a secure long-term income that gets people a home – which is a good reason for minimising insecurity in the jobs market. A stable and secure income is important for individuals’ credit rating and thus their financial wellbeing, according to journalists’ advice on how to obtain a good credit rating.

An ‘on your bike’ economy where individuals have unpredictable changes in jobs and housing may also be inimical to family relationships and children’s education ‘

BI and the freedom to with-hold one’s labour

So far this paper has focussed on one potential effect of BI –the increase in the supply of labour. That is, the unemployed would move more easily into employment because they would face no poverty trap, and precarious jobs would become more acceptable. But it is often said that BI would enable people not to work, that is not to work for so long or all the time because they chose study, caring, or volunteering; or not to work because they wanted to refuse exploitative conditions. At first sight these two expectations seem in contradiction to each other; would BI induce more paid work or less? Firstly, it depends on the level of BI compared to average wages. Secondly, the effects would differ between various population groups.

Let us consider first the effect of BI on the unemployed. Unemployed people fall mainly into two groups – those receiving JSA and those who are ineligible – plus some eligible non-claimants who feel they cannot meet the very strict conditions, or have no fixed address. The ineligible group are mainly people whose 6 months’ entitlement to insurance-based JSA has expired and they cannot claim income-tested JSA because they have an employed partner . Ineligible unemployed also include those aged under 18. The argument that people are deterred from working by the benefits poverty trap applies mainly to this non-claimant group, because for those on JSA, the benefit conditions are the main factor. People on JSA are currently under such strict rules as to what jobs they can refuse that they are often obliged through fear of sanctions to apply for rock bottom pay and conditions regardless of the ‘poverty trap’ (Gray 2004). The financial incentive effect of a BI (that is, removing the poverty trap) would make little difference to them. What would make a big difference is that BI is unconditional : all the job centre rules about applying for so many jobs each week, with sanctions for even minor rule infringements, would not apply.

Current JSA rules have been getting gradually tighter, with sanctions and the imposition of compulsory work-for-benefit placements becoming more common, even since 1996. These aspects of the job centre system, described by labour economists as ‘conditionality’ and by critics also as ‘workfarist (Gray, 2004; Peck and Theodore, 2000) were designed to chase people into bad jobs. According to OECD-reported research, greater conditionality of benefits systems do increase the outflow from unemployment into jobs (OECD, 1994, 2000). That is, greater conditionality leads to an increase in labour supply. Conversely, relaxing the punitive sanctions and workfare regime would enable people to spend longer looking for a good job, or re-training in new skills, with nobody forcing them to take the first offer even if this does not meet their income and job security needs or fully use their skills. That is, less conditionality could be expected to lead to a fall in labour supply; this option to turn down bad jobs would work against the Speenhamland effect explained earlier. If a BI was introduced, it is hard to say which effect would win out – easier recruitment by employers to low paid or casual work because of the cushion of BI, or more difficult recruitment on low wages/temporary contracts because of the end to benefit ‘conditionality’.

It is because of the threat of sanctions and workfare that some voices in the trade union movement have recently taken up the historically popular claimants’ movement demand for a BI, a demand first flagged up by Bill Jordan (1989). BI was enthusiastically discussed at a conference on welfare held by UNITE and the PCS in autumn 2014, leading to the publication by UNITE of the ‘National Welfare Charter’ linking BI to the demands to end sanctions and workfare, which was endorsed by a fringe meeting of the TUC in 2015 (see

There was also a UNITE/USDAW motion supporting the principle of BI passed at the TUC itself in 2016.

Over and above the virtue of abolishing benefit sanctions, a BI that was high enough to enable people to refuse low pay or very insecure work would probably reduce the total of hours worked and the number of jobs offered. Some of the worst jobs would not be offered because they would attract few applicants. But if the BI was not high enough to enable people to refuse ‘bad’ jobs, it would have the opposite effect – low pay would be more acceptable and employers would recruit more easily at low wages than if there was no BI. It is impossible to say, a priori, how much would be ‘high enough’ to mark the tipping point or boundary between these two effects, above which labour supply falls. Moreover, the tipping point could vary according to socioeconomic group and region.

Turning to people who are not on out-of-work benefits – that is, people in paid work, mothers and other carers, students and would-be students, the level of the BI would be the key factor in their decisions about whether and how much to work. Just as people clearly find it hard to manage on JSA of £73.10 per week, they would probably not stay completely out of work for long on a BI of £70 or £80 per week unless they had some parental support. However for many students that might be riches, given that the maximum maintenance grant of £65 per week in England has just been abolished for new starters. Some parents might work more if they found £70 or £80 a handy childcare grant, but others might want to spend more time with their children. Some older people might find it was enough to make up any deficit in their pension entitlement and therefore retire sooner than they would otherwise. Some full-time workers might do less overtime, and some people (in particular students or those in poor health) might give up part-time jobs. Some people might feel more confident about starting their own business with even a small BI as a cushion in the early stages, rather as they were once encouraged by the Enterprise Allowance Scheme of the 1980s – but they could be people moving out of unemployment or out of jobs they found boring or ill-paid, so the net effect on labour supply is again unpredictable.

If a BI were high enough (how high we don’t know) it would encourage more people to work part-time, even those used to quite high hourly rates. For there to be any substantial effect of a BI in terms of people withdrawing, at least by working shorter hours, from jobs they already had, a BI would have to offer enough for them to feel that the loss of income was worth the gain in non-work time. For example if a BI of £150 per week was introduced, this would enable someone to give up 10 hours work per week without loss of income if s/he earned £15 per hour after tax, but to give up 15 hours work per week and have the same weekly income as before if s/he only earned £10 net per hour. But if the BI were only £60, the person on £15 per hour would only feel motivated to work 4 hours per week less whilst the person on £10 per hour might work 6 hours less. The higher the BI in relation to the individual’s hourly wage, the greater would be the likely reduction in labour supply from people already in paid work. The ‘value of leisure’ (whether used as leisure, or for some form of unpaid work or study) clearly varies considerably with the individual, depending on their tastes, commitments and current hourly wage rate. As a rule of thumb, one might expect that if – and only if – people have a ‘target weekly income’ they want, irrespective of the amount of effort it takes to obtain it, the ratio of the BI to the hourly wage rate gives us the maximum number of hours by which they would seek to reduce their work time. So for example, if the hourly wage was £10, a BI of £100 would induce people working 45 hours to seek only 35 hours, and a BI of £140 would induce people to seek 31 hours rather than 45. But things might not be as simple as that, firstly because the value of the first extra hour of leisure may be greater than further hours, secondly because employers are not that flexible, and thirdly because the ‘target weekly income’ may vary with the extent of income security, the effort involved in earning, the costs of commuting, work clothes and lunches, and the influence of other family members in response to the introduction of a BI.

Conversely, if we consider new graduates or school leavers, or mothers returning to work, the question might be, ‘what is the minimum extra income I need?’ The higher the BI, the more likely they would be to meet that target with a small number of hours’ work per week. The higher the ratio of the BI to the hourly wage, the more likely are new entrants or re-entrants to the labour market to be satisfied with a small number of hours of work. But independently of the level of the BI, the higher their hourly wage rate the more likely people are to achieve their ‘target’ income with a short working week. So if we want to encourage part-time work to reduce any pressure placed by automation on the ‘supply’ of jobs, a high legal minimum wage would help, whatever the level of BI offered.

Clearly not everyone would react to the introduction of BI in the same way. How it would affect their ‘propensity to work’ would vary with the level of wages individuals can obtain, depending on occupation, skills, experience; their entitlements (or lack of them) under the previous benefit system; caring commitments; the desire to study; their partner’s work, their health/disability; and heir closeness to pensionable age.

Who would work less and who would work more ?

This section attempts to investigate what the effect of a BI might be on the employment behaviour of different groups in the population. Who would respond to a BI by offering more labour to the market – taking a job when they hadn’t before, or seeking longer hours? And who would respond to a BI by reducing their personal labour supply, dropping out of paid work or seeking shorter hours?

The method used here is first to consider which categories of people would gain from a BI introduced in the range of £70 to £90 per week for a working age adult, and which categories would lose through paying higher taxes to finance the BI. Both gainers and losers are categorised by their current employment status. They include full time workers, who can vary their hours only by doing overtime in some instances: and part-time workers or self-employed people, both of whom can in theory at least vary their working hours quite a lot, in the case of the part-timers possibly by changing jobs or taking two jobs. Then there are unemployed jobseekers (divided into those claiming JSA and those who are not claiming); people who are medically unfit for employment or whose job choices are heavily constrained by their health; people whose main activity is caring for relatives; students; and those who are still under pension age but wholly or partly retired. Most of these groups can be identified from the Labour Force Survey; however, the published data for 2016 do not identify all the categories in the table separately, and have been supplemented by published LFS data for earlier dates, and from other sources as detailed in the notes. There may be an unintended overlap, thus some double counting, for some categories. Thus the estimates of numbers are very rough, and may be regarded as guesstimates of the rough order of magnitude of numbers pending the possibility of access to the raw data which one could interrogate to provide better estimates of the numbers in these various categories. Further information about sources, and some caveats, is given in the note to the two tables below.

 

 

Table 1 shows roughly how many people are in each sub-group, and hazards a guess at what the effects might be for different sections of the labour force of a BI in the region of current JSA entitlement or not much higher. For clarity, those whom we can expect would be likely to raise their hours of work in response to a BI are highlighted in yellow and those whom we expect to reduce their hours in grey. This table suggests what might be the direction of change in offer of paid work to the market from each group, considering both the likely effects of the BI itself and the likely effects of higher taxes to pay for it, compared to the current system. The higher tax burden would of course impact on income groups above the ‘breakeven’ level where BI and income tax bill would be equal. Table 2 shows guesstimates for what might be the total effect on labour supply in terms of hours per week. It should be emphasised that this is highly speculative and needs to be informed by more research on labour supply elasticities and the gains/losses produced by a BI system compared to the current benefits system, as well as by interrogation of the Labour Force Survey and other large data sets to obtain better estimates of the numbers in each labour market category. The guesstimates of what proportion of people in each of the categories would respond by working more or less are mere hypotheses and not based on evidence. However, the table may serve to show the very rough orders of magnitude of the changes expected.

In Table 1 there are four quadrants; on the left side are those who are currently not in paid work and on the right side those who are employed or self-employed. In the upper half of the table are the ‘gainers’ from BI (‘G’ groups) and in the lower half the ‘losers’ who would pay more tax than their BI – that is, their income is above the breakeven point. These two variables – in paid work or not, gainers or losers, divide the table into four.

In the upper left quadrant (gainers from BI, not employed) we have those with non-economic reasons for staying out of the labour market, plus those most affected by the ‘poverty trap’ in the current benefits system. Unemployed people, if claiming benefit, would be more likely to enter work quickly because their BI would remove the poverty trap, although as noted earlier the effect of removing benefit conditionality would work in the opposite direction and modify this incentive effect. Unemployed people not claiming benefit would especially gain from a BI taking them out of the poverty trap if any money they earn currently results in a loss of JSA or tax credit for their partner. But the published LFS data do not tell us how many of them are in this kind of household situation. So the table makes a very arbitrary guess that half of the non-claimant unemployed are in this situation.

In the bottom left quadrant (non-employed ‘losers’ from BI) we have the ‘early retired’ and a few others who are not working by choice – taking a gap year, ‘housewives’ (or ‘househusbands’) without young children, etc. It is assumed that most of these, in particular ‘early retired’ people (those aged 50 to 64, not in paid work, nor disabled nor engaged in care ) are in the ‘loser’ category since they have decided they do not need earnings, so they are probably people of above average means due to wealth, partner’s income or early pension entitlement. Also in the bottom left quadrant, a few early retired people (defined as aged 50-64 and not working or claiming unwaged benefits) might respond to higher tax by thinking their money is no longer enough and they should take a part time job – or keep up some activity in their former profession. In the bottom right quadrant (employed or self-employed, ‘losers’) other workers aged 50 plus, if already partly retired and working part-time, might decide that the extra tax makes it no longer worth working and would retire completely. Also in this quadrant are some other part-time workers who are not carers, nor over 50, nor disabled nor students – it is assumed that they have non-economic reasons for their choice of paid hours and that a BI would probably not affect this choice.

In the top right quadrant of the table (in paid work, whether full or part time, gainers from BI) we have people who are employed (or self-employed) part-time because of caring or for health reasons, plus students. Many students can be expected to drop their part-time jobs if they had a BI, at least in term time, and this is important because there are over 2.3 million students employed part-time – they are a larger category than the unemployed. Then there are mothers who are in paid work part-time; they might be affected by the poverty trap associated with tax credits, and welcome the lower withdrawal rate of a BI, so they might seek longer hours. However research on American and Canadian experiments in offering something like a BI suggests that women with children tend to reduce their hours (or delay return to work) when offered a BI (Prescott et al. 1986, Hum and Simpson 1993). But if they are lone parents on benefit or their partner is not working (and therefore claiming income based JSA in the current system), they might work longer hours because they would no longer penalised by a loss of benefits from the household as their earnings rise. Blundell, Dias, Meghir and Shaw (2012,2015), when modelling the effects of the 1999 introduction of WFTC, found that more generous in-work benefits overall reduce mothers’ work offer to the market. The change from Family Income Supplement to WFTC in 1999 made the in-work benefits regime more generous with a lower ‘taper’ rate and by starting the taper at a higher level of income. This change was rather like what a BI would do since it offered, in effect, a higher ‘disregard’ of earnings and partial alleviation of the poverty trap. Modelling the introduction of WFTC showed a positive effect on lone mothers’ employment rates – but only very small unless they were home owners. For the much larger number of partnered mothers, there was a negative effect on employment rates of 2-3%, and also a negative effect on their hours. On balance it seems likely that the effect of a BI on the employment seeking behaviour of part-time-employed mothers would be a small reduction in the hours they offer to the labour market.

Table 2 attempts to gauge the rough orders of magnitude of these effects, to determine whether it is more likely that a BI would lead to a rise in aggregate labour supply or a fall. This second table takes each of the groups identified in Table 1 and hazards a guess at how large the effect per person in each group would be. Thus, having established hypotheses about the direction of labour supply effect in Table 1, Table 2 offers a guesstimate of how large these effects would be. It suggests that a BI for working age adults in the range of £70 to £90 per week, if all benefits for children and disabled people remain as now, would produce a substantial increase in labour supply, of 3.92 million hours or the equivalent of 98,000 full time workers. Compared to the overall 31.56 million people in paid employment or self-employment, this seems small – but in certain sectors and places where jobs are scarce, it could have a substantial effect on wage levels. As shown at the end of Table 2, there is a particularly large increase in labour supply for unskilled or entry level jobs – altogether possibly almost 12.3 million hours. This is a very powerful argument for keeping a minimum wage law in place.

The overall result is highly sensitive to the size of the effect on the unemployed, which is likely to be the largest of all the effects on separate labour force groups. Alongside the effect on the unemployed, there would be substantial effects on students and mothers. The potential increase in labour supply from the unemployed, if the BI reduced their number by one third, would be perhaps 21 million hours per week. But the contrary fall in labour supply from students might be over 11 million hours per week. This is useful to the job prospects of the unemployed, since they often compete with students for unskilled part-time jobs.

For mothers, the effects are particularly unpredictable and would depend a great deal on what regime is in place to help with childcare costs, as well as on the income tax rate. In the table, if a 5% increase is assumed in the number of working mothers and their average hours were 19 per week (as estimated by Alakeson, 2012), this would lead to an increase in labour supply of 2.09 million hours.

Full time workers who do not currently get WTC but who would gain from BI might reduce their overtime, which in aggregate amounts to a large effect even though paid overtime per person across the labour force is very small anyway in the current state of the economy. The full time workers who don’t gain from BI, but find themselves with a higher tax rate than before or in a higher tax band, might also do less overtime because of the disincentive effect. A guesstimate is a fall of 7.7 million hours per week, if say average overtime per worker was reduced from one hour to half an hour across all these full time workers.

At this level of BI few full timers would feel able to switch to part-time jobs, unless perhaps nearing retirement. But assuming a BI would mean a higher income tax bill for some groups, some early-retired workers might re-enter the labour force for ‘mini-jobs’ (‘unretirement’) and some might postpone their retirement. Others might reduce their hours, whether because they felt the BI enabled them to do so, or because if they were well paid and therefore in a higher tax band to pay for the BI, they felt deterred from continuing full time. These effects are small and comprise increases in hours from some older workers set against reductions from others – the net effect might be less than one million hours per week. (Effects on people over 64 are not considered here; however depending on the level of BI for people currently receiving state pension, there obviously would be some labour market effects in so far as some pensioners do also have jobs)

Conclusion

The interesting points shown by this series of guesstimates are that firstly whilst the effect of a BI on unemployed people’s job seeking and job acceptance is the largest effect, the effects on mothers, students and choice of retirement age are also important. Whereas much discussion of the labour market effects of BI has focussed on the unemployed or ‘prime age’ full time workers, the responses of other groups in the labour force may be of considerable impact on the likely change in overall labour supply. Despite the likely fall in students’ working hours, one would expect a large rise in labour supply will be at the lower end of the pay ladder, making the retention of a minimum wage very important. It must be emphasised that the guesstimates of both size and direction of the labour supply effects mentioned here are highly speculative, and no more than an initial sketch of the several different effects that need to be subjected to proper econometric modelling in order to assess what would really be the effects of introducing a BI.

If we now consider a considerably higher BI – say £150 per week – it is likely that some full time workers with no caring commitments and of ‘prime’ working age would reduce their hours to part-time, if their job conditions permitted that. There would probably be a demand for three or four-day a week jobs. Here the previous analysis about the trade-off between the hourly value of leisure and the wage rate comes into play.

If people did reduce their income from work it would erode the income tax base, which must be taken into account in assessing how large a BI would be affordable. Ensuring that a BI does not induce a fall in the tax revenue used to pay for it is one of several reasons why it would be desirable to fund it partly from non-income tax sources – such as taxes on personal wealth, land value tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax.

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