by Malcolm Torry | Aug 3, 2020 | News, Opinion
The World Bank has published a substantial report titled Exploring Universal Basic Income: A guide to navigating concepts, evidence, and practices
Universal basic income (UBI) is emerging as one of the most hotly debated issues in development and social protection policy. But what are the features of UBI? What is it meant to achieve? How do we know, and what don’t we know, about its performance? What does it take to implement it in practice? Drawing from global evidence, literature, and survey data, this volume provides a framework to elucidate issues and trade-offs in UBI with a view to help inform choices around its appropriateness and feasibility in different contexts. Specifically, the book examines how UBI differs from or complements other social assistance programs in terms of objectives, coverage, incidence, adequacy, incentives, effects on poverty and inequality, financing, political economy, and implementation. It also reviews past and current country experiences, surveys the full range of existing policy proposals, provides original results from micro–tax benefit simulations, and sets out a range of considerations around the analytics and practice of UBI.
The report can be downloaded free here.
Brief comment
The report employs throughout a definition of Universal Basic Income that matches BIEN’s definition of Basic Income. Consistency of definition is a commendable characteristic of the report as a whole.
The only caveat is that chapter 4 assumes that a UBI would replace existing social assistance provision. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that in some countries poverty and inequality would increase if the UBI were to be implemented. The authors do not simulate the option of leaving existing social assistance provision in place and reducing it by the extent of the UBI. In the context of a progressive tax system, such schemes would not increase poverty or inequality.
Apart from that, this is a most useful report.
by Malcolm Torry | Jul 31, 2020 | News
The Basic Income Lab at the University of Stanford has published a useful overview report, What we know about Universal Basic Income: A cross-synthesis of reviews
This report is structured as follows. First, it provides an overview of the reviews. Then it synthesizes the basis of evidence (e.g., experiments, policies, and programs) that has been used to arrive at conclusions about UBI as well as the types of outcomes that have been of interest to researchers and the evidence that exists for these outcomes. The final section highlights gaps in the current state of the evidence and where future research is required.
Readers might wish to be aware of how definitions are used in this report. ‘UBI’ means ‘a cash transfer given to all members of a community on a recurrent basis regardless of income level and with no strings attached’; and ‘UBI-type’ means a cash benefit with some of the characteristics of a Basic Income, but not others. Particular care needs to be taken over the word ‘unconditional’. In this report, ‘unconditional’ can mean that receipt of the income is conditional on having a low income, but is not conditional in any other way.
by Malcolm Torry | Jul 31, 2020 | News
Marie Claire has published an article by Katia Savchuk that describes the experience of one of the participants in an experiment that gave $1,000 a month for a year to twenty individuals selected by ballot.
… In November 2018, McDonald got a call from Aisha Nyandoro, head of Springboard to Opportunities, a local nonprofit where McDonald had taken a career-readiness class. Nyandoro said she’d picked McDonald’s name in a lottery to get $1,000 a month for a year, as part of an experiment called Magnolia Mother’s Trust that was giving no-strings-attached cash to 20 Black single mothers in Jackson’s low-income housing. When her first check arrived, McDonald had $1.01 in her bank account. …
Click here to read the article.
by Malcolm Torry | Jul 31, 2020 | News
The organisers say this about the webinar:
The Web Lecture is being delivered by Professor Guy Standing, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London; Co-founder and Co-President, Basic Income Earth Network and Former Director of ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme. MS. Renana Jhabvala, Chairperson, SEWA Bharat will Moderate the Web Lecture.
A basic income system is one in which all individuals within a community receive a modest regular cash payment without conditions as a non-withdrawable economic right. It is a component of a distributive system, necessarily complemented by other public benefits and services. Drawing on recent books, this lecture will examine the ethical justifications for a quasi-universal basic income, considering the standard objections, and then argue that in an era of severe economic shocks and pandemics, in which the neo-liberal economics revolution has generated a global system of rentier capitalism, it is also a policy imperative. As such, it should be understood as a feasible, affordable base of a new income distribution system. Finally, it will consider how its economic and social effects differ from other possible policy interventions. This will draw in part from pilots done in India and Africa covering thousands of individuals in many communities. It will plead for an end of a dialogue of the deaf that has characterised much of the debate on basic income in India.
For further details, click here; and to register for the webinar, here
by Malcolm Torry | Jul 29, 2020 | Opinion
The Canadian Sayout newsletter has printed an article about Basic Income:
… At present government is paying out vast sums of money. In effect, we have a new and large-scale experiment by government in directly providing people with incomes. This gives us some indication
of how a guaranteed income plan could work. Such a plan would be universal. And, as is now being demonstrated, it actually can be done.
A guaranteed, universal, and livable income programme would be transformative for our society. It would directly address income inequality. It would diminish and possibly eliminate poverty once and for all. …
The author, Robyn Peterson, has clarified his use of terms in the article:
a proper BI should be unconditional with the same amount being paid to every citizen or legal resident. This would avoid the somewhat cumbersome issue of establishing who should benefit and by how much, with a progressive income tax system evening things out.
