Gyeonggi Province, Republic of Korea, has been implementing the Youth Basic Income (YBI) programme since April 1, 2019. The English edition of the report on the project was published in July and can be accessed here.
The following is a short introduction by Ikjin Yu, Researcher at Gyeonggi Research Institute, Dept. of Economic & Social Policy.
Gyeonggi Province, Republic of Korea, has been implementing the Youth Basic Income (YBI) programme since April 1, 2019. In December 2020, Gyeonggi Research Institute (GRI), an affiliated organisation of Gyeonggi Province, published a research report (Korean version), focusing on the first year result of the YBI programme. Recently, in July 2021, GRI has published its English version.
This research report mainly consists of quantitative and qualitative analyses.
For quantitative analysis, the experimental group comprised 11,335 recipients who participated in both the ex-ante and ex-post surveys, whereas the comparison group included 800 respondents who resided in regions other than Gyeonggi Province. There were five categories for analysis such as “happiness”, “health and diet”, “perceptions and attitudes”, “economic activity” and “dream-capital”. The results of the Difference-In-Differences (DID) analysis showed that Gyeonggi YBI positively influenced on their happiness, mental health, workout frequency, diet, perception on gender and equal society, dream-capital, economic activity, time use and so forth.
For qualitative analysis, participants of individual interviews and focus group interviews (FGI) were variously grouped by detailed category. It was conducted on 24-year-olds residing in Gyeonggi Province only who received four rounds of Gyeonggi YBI. A total of 42 participated in the individual interviews and the FGIs. The analysis shows many things regarding Gyeonggi 24-year-olds’ perception of Gyeonggi YBI and basic income itself.
The research report concluded that the Gyeonggi YBI has positively influenced on the 24-year- old youths’ life in various aspects based on the recipients’ experience over the past one year.
A popular 5-minute introductory video on Basic Income, in English, is now online.
The video was originally made in Spanish, produced by Atxe, a Spanish artist, as a project for Red Renta Basica, the Spanish affiliation of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), 2 years ago. It gathered a great success reaching more than 5 million people. [1]
Carlos Arias, an activist of the Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE), took the initiative to make an English version, which is now available online. Narration in English was done by Barb Jacobson, former chair of UBIE.
On this occasion, we had a short interview with Atxe to show our respect to the artist who made the probably most watched video on UBI:
– How you were involved in making the video?
Atxe: Basic income is something that has been of my interest for a long time. I had previously done this kind of videos – for instance, on the TTIP – and David Casassas, as a member of Red Renta Básica, suggested me to make one explaining the main ideas that association defends.
– How you do you think of great success of the video?
Atxe: I think basic income is a proposal that creates a lot of controversy and, either you like it or not, it shakes you up. The video deals with issues and problems that speak to a large number of people and that leave you everything but indifferent – especially in Spain, where we are intensely suffering the blow of the crisis. Also, I tried to make a fun and entertaining video, which, I suppose, helped too. I must add to all this that the dissemination campaign we did in social networks – many members of Red Renta Básica and other companions actively participated in it – ended up being really successful – the video became a trending topic fast and kept this position during almost two days.
– What do you think of the idea of UBI?
Atxe: In addition to all the benefits the video talks about and that every basic income supporter knows, basic income is today more relevant than ever because it can break the fear that permeates a large part of our societies. It is a fear that too many times is translated into fuel for the rise of the far-right, and basic income could put an end to this tendency.
[1] 5,423,641 visitors between 22 February 2017 and 30 January 2019 (data provided by Carlos Arias, a Facebook page administrator of Renta Básica Universal)
The Green European Foundation (GEF) has published its report on UBI: European Green Perspectives on Basic Income, on 18th February 2019.
GEF is one of the ‘political foundations at European level’ (a.k.a. Eurofoundations) that are research and advocacy organisations funded by the European Parliament.
GEF ran a project ‘Basic Income for all EU citizens?’ for the past two years (2017-2018). This report is one of its outcomes. The report’s forewords by Susanne Rieger and Ville Ylikahri outlines the aim of the project: ‘investigating the [UBI] proposal’s potential in relation to employment, the recognition of work beyond paid work, and the gendered division of the labour’ (p.5). This threefold aim is in sharp contrast to the narrow focus of the Finnish Government experiment run concurrently with the GEF’s project. The Finnish Government only focused on employment and paid no attention to unpaid work and the gender division of labour.
The report contains the accessible introduction, ‘Twelve Questions and Answers on Universal Basic Income’ by Natalie Bennet, a former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. It is followed by 9 substantial articles. The report’s concluding chapter evaluates the EU-wide UBI proposal from ‘Social Europe’ perspective.
Preliminary results of the basic income experiment, which the Finnish government implemented in 2017-2018, was presented at Säätytalo, “House of the Estates” (Snellmaninkatu 9-11, Helsinki), on Friday, 8th February 2019, as we reported previously.
Olli Kangas, scientific leader of the study and Professor of Practice at the University of Turku, summed up the result concisely when he was asked by a journalist:
No significant effects on employment, but important effects on well-being.
At the event, Kangas gave an overview of the preliminary finding; Ohto Kanninen, research coordinator at the Labour Institute for Economic Research, spoke on the effects on employment; and Minna Ylikännö, senior researher at Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, presented on the effects on well-being.
The event can be watched online here, and the summary can be read here.
The final results will be published in 2020.
For what the experiment can and cannot tell us, this piece and literature mentioned in the piece could be helpful. For literature on other experiments, this page might be a good starting point.
Preliminary results of the basic income experiment, which Finish government implemented in 2017-2018, will be presented at Säätytalo, “House of the Estates” (Snellmaninkatu 9-11, Helsinki), on Friday, 8th February 2019, between 8.30 and 10.30 (time in Helsinki, GMT +2).
