by Cameron McLeod | Apr 15, 2017 | Research
Kimberly G. Noble, associate professor of neuroscience and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, has published an article in Nature which summarizes her research background and an upcoming experiment into brain development and poverty. Noble asks whether poverty may affect the development, “the size, shape, and functioning,” of a child’s brain, and whether “a cash stipend to parents” would prevent this kind of damage. Noble here describes the background and methodological underpinnings of a larger experiment not yet begun; the development of which Basic Income News has covered in the past.
Noble writes that “poverty places the young child’s brain at much greater risk of not going through the paces of normal development.” Children raised in poverty perform less well in school, are less likely to graduate from high school, and are less likely to continue on to college. Children raised in poverty are also more likely to be underemployed when adults. Sociological research and research done in the area of neuroscience has shown that a childhood spent in poverty can result in “significant differences in the size, shape and functioning” of the brain. Can the damage done to children’s brains be negated by the intervention of a subsidy for brain health?
Noble summarizes her 15 years of research into this subject. This most recent study’s fundamental difference from past efforts is that it explores what kind of effect “directly supplementing” the incomes of families will have on brain development. “Cash transfers, as opposed to counseling, child care and other services, have the potential to empower families to make the financial decisions they deem best for themselves and their children.” Noble’s hypothesis is that a “cascade of positive effects” will follow from the cash transfers, and that if proved correct, this has implications for public policy and “the potential to…affect the lives of millions of disadvantaged families with young children.”
Paper: Kimberly G. Noble, “Brain Trust,” Scientific American 316, 44-49, March 2017
Photo Credit: Childhood CC Farhad Sadykov
by Kate McFarland | Apr 13, 2017 | Research
Global Social Policy, a peer-reviewed journal on public policy and social development, has included a forum on basic income in its March 2017 volume.
The forum contains four short articles:
1. “Universal basic income in a feminist perspective and gender analysis” by Patricia Schulz (published previously, and summarized in Basic Income News here).
2. “Universal basic income as development solution?” by Anita Lacey (Politics and International Relations, University of Auckland, New Zealand). Lacey outlines the potential for UBI to promote individual freedom and impact social and economic relations, and briefly describes the basic income pilot conducted in Namibia.
3. “Social protection and basic income in global policy” by Moritz von Gliszczynski (LAG Soziale Brennpunkte Niedersachsen, Germany). Von Gliszczynski analyzes the lack of attention to UBI in global policy discourse, and argues that this is due to two factors: first, in contrast to alternative policies such as social cash transfers, UBI is not directly aimed at traditional goals such as “transform[ing] the poor into agents of development”; second, proposals for UBI are vague and supported by comparative little empirical evidence.
4. “Basic income: A social democratic perspective” by Andrew Jackson (Carleton University and Broadbent Institute, Canada). Jackson argues UBI is too expensive and risks jeopardizing existing programs. Additionally, raising taxing to support a large, untargeted benefit is likely not to be politically feasible.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The Shopping Sherpa
by Kate McFarland | Apr 11, 2017 | Research
Canada’s Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ), a faith-based nonprofit organization dedicated to researching and promoting justice in public policy, has published a briefing note on CPJ’s position on guaranteed livable income (GLI) (sometimes also referred to as a ‘guaranteed minimum income’ or ‘guaranteed annual income’). CPJ defines a GLI as an “income security system that would ensure that everyone has access to the basic necessities of life and the means to participate meaningfully in the life of their community” — which encompasses several types of policies, including a negative income tax (NIT), top-up programs, and a universal basic income (here called a ‘demogrant’ as is common in Canadian terminology*).
A long-time supporter of GLI, CPJ has published work on the topic in the past, including an infographic previously featured in Basic Income News (here and here) and a backgrounder report and position paper that were published as two-part feature “Toward a Guaranteed Livable Income” in June 2008. Additionally, CPJ has participated in events hosted by BIEN’s two North American affiliates–the Basic Income Canada Network and US Basic Income Guarantee Network–and, indeed, the organization was a cofounder of the Canadian affiliate at the 2008 BIEN Congress in Dublin, Ireland.
In the new paper, CPJ re-articulates its position that GLI is “an important strategy for addressing fundamental societal inequities” in Canada. More specifically, it recommends an incremental approach to implementing a nationwide GLI program, expanding successful programs for children and seniors to poor adults of working age. In this, CPJ calls for an NIT or top-up design–which would involve transfers only to the poor–over a basic income or demogrant, which judges to be “prohibitively expensive” even at amounts below the country’s most commonly used low-income levels. Moreover, CPJ recommends that, while benefits should be granted to individuals (as in a basic income), the program should be structured to account for household characteristics (such as numbers of children and caregivers) in determining the amount of the benefit.
CPJ advises the use of pilot studies to determine what specific design of the GLI is most effective at reducing poverty while guaranteeing that no low-income individuals are worse off than under the current system. In doing so, the organization stresses the importance of community involvement in the research.
The CPJ’s new briefing note comes at a time when GLI is in the spotlight in Canada–with Ontario planning to launch a pilot study in the spring of this year. In February 2016, the provincial government allocated part of its budget to a GLI pilot, and the project has been in development since this time. Following the release of a preliminary discussion paper by project adviser Hugh Segal (a former Canadian Senator and long-time GLI advocate), the government solicited public feedback on the design of the pilot. Results from the public consultations were published in March 2017.
Reference
Citizens for Public Justice (March 2017) “Briefing Note: Towards a Guaranteed Livable Income“
*In the Canadian context, the term ‘basic income’ or ‘basic income guarantee’ is frequently used to mean guaranteed livable income.
Reviewed by Dawn Howard
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Kat Northern Lights Man
by Genevieve Shanahan | Apr 9, 2017 | Research
Carlos Rodríguez-Castelán, a senior economist for Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank Group, has written a policy research working paper analysing conditional cash transfer programmes. Such conditional policies provide cash transfers to households only if they meet requirements – such as school attendance or health checkups – thought to be beneficial in terms of poverty alleviation. The intention is that poverty is addressed in two ways: through the cash payment in the short term, and through the “human capital formation” realised through the conditions in the longer term.
A worry, however, is that the poorest households are excluded from such programmes, as they are the least likely to be able to meet the conditions of the transfer:
“Because targeted transfers are usually conditioned on the consumption of normal goods, richer eligible households are more likely to consume more educational and health care opportunities than poorer ones. Thus, the eligible poorest households may benefit least from conditional cash transfers even to the extent that they may not participate at all.”
Of particular relevance to the question of basic income (defined as universal, individual, and unconditional) is the finding that, for governments that care about how poor the poorest are, rather than merely the proportion of residents who are classed as poor, “unconditional cash transfers may be preferable over conditional cash transfers”.
Carlos Rodríguez-Castelán, “Conditionality as Targeting? Participation and Distributional Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers,” World Bank Group, January 11, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo: Receiving cash transfer payments, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 World Bank Photo Collection
by Kate McFarland | Apr 8, 2017 | Research
Matthew Dimick, Associate Professor of Law at University at Buffalo, has written a new article for the Indiana Law Review in which he compares the promises of basic income to those of working-time regulation, presenting a case to prefer the latter.
According to Dimick, the potential benefits of working-time regulation outweigh those of basic income, in large part because they would be shared more equitably throughout the population. For example, on Dimick’s assessment, a basic income would not allow the majority of people to increase their leisure time (a benefit he sees as largely confined those who “earn subsistence-level incomes or lower” and thus “would have either the option not to work or the bargaining power to secure a more favorable work-leisure trade-off with employers”); working-time regulation, in contrast, would increase leisure time for middle- and even upper-class workers as well. Additionally, Dimick argues that working-time regulation could allow not only leisure but also jobs to be more widely available and equitably distributed — whereas a basic income would deepen the divide between the working and non-working populations.
And working-time regulation might have other positive effects. For instance, due to the across-the-board increase in leisure time, Dimick contends that the policy would likely result in decreased consumption, while a basic income might spur additional consumption — leading to a preference for the former from an ecological viewpoint.
Further, because working-time regulation is a less radical departure from current policies — and, in particular, does not aim to sever benefits from work — it is much better positioned to gain popular and political support.
Dimick notes that basic income might do more than working-time regulation alone to “transform the workplace” (e.g. by giving more bargaining power to employees themselves) but that, with respect to this goal, working-time regulation should be conceived as part of a larger set of legislative reforms.
Matthew Dimick’s current areas of research include labor and employment law, tax and welfare policies, and income inequality. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied organized labor under Erik Olin Wright and Ivan Ermakoff, and a JD from Cornell Law School.
Matthew Dimick, 2017, “Better Than Basic Income? Liberty, Equality, and the Regulation of Working Time,” Indiana Law Review.
Post reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo CC BY-ND 2.0 Laurence Edmondson
by Kate McFarland | Apr 3, 2017 | Research
Photo Neil Conway/Flickr, CC BY
Psychologists for Social Change, a UK-based network of applied psychologists, academics, therapists and psychology graduates, publishes reports on topics at the intersection of psychology and public policy, such as the psychological impact of austerity policies and, now, basic income. It’s an important movement that could lead to significant social understanding and change for the better. Projects like this drive social advancement but rely on the bravery of individuals to start them. To do this you’d need leadership qualities amongst many other skills, but you can learn everything there is to learn if you have enough passion.
A briefing paper published in March 2017 examines the potential psychological effects of a universal basic income (described therein as “a regular, non-means tested, guaranteed income, delivered to every citizen of and beyond working age”) and offers recommendations for further research.
According to the report, there is evidence to suggest that basic income could increase five important psychological indicators: agency, security, connection, meaning, and trust. With respect to agency, the authors maintain that a basic income would allow individuals to “make meaningful choices about the kind of work they would like to do”. Additionally, they claim that the removal of sanctions on benefits would increase the sense of agency for recipients. With respect to connection, they note that a basic income is individual rather than household based, eliminating economic constraints on relationship formation, and that the policy could potentially allow individuals to work less, spending more time with friends and family. Meaning, according to the authors, would be promoted insofar as individuals are able to take advantage of the basic income to “prioritize spending time on creative projects, volunteering or other non-paid work (such as caring) that has meaning for them”.
At the same time, Psychologists for Social Change acknowledge that the effects of basic income are uncertain, and they call for more trials of the policy in the UK, which, in particular, would gather data on mental well-being and other psychological indicators.
Read the full report:
Psychologists for Social Change, “Universal Basic Income: A Psychological Impact Assessment” (March 2017).
Reviewed by Dawn Howard
Photo CC BY 2.0 Neil Conway
