by Yannick Vanderborght | Aug 6, 2013 | Research
This story begins, “A new pilot study at Panthbadodiya could significantly change living conditions for the poor, and India’s approach to fighting poverty. The village is taking part in the Madhya Pradesh Unconditional Cash Transfer Initiative, a project run by the Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa; a trade union that has defended the rights of women with low incomes in India for 40 years), with subsidies from Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund) India. The research director, Sarath Dewala, explained: ‘The experiment involves giving individuals a small sum of money, at regular intervals, as a supplement to all other forms of income, and observing what happens to their families if this sum is given unconditionally.’ …”
Fernandez, Benjamin “Rupees in your pocket,” the Morung Express, 2013
by Karl Widerquist | Aug 2, 2013 | Research
Yglesias, Matthew, “Good News About Unconditional Transfers to the Global Poor”
In the latest of several articles on Basic Income for Slate magazine, Matthew Yglesias reports on a pilot project in Uganda. The project found “recipients of one-off lump-sum cash transfers earn substantially higher annual incomes two and four years after the intervention.”
Yglesias, Matthew, “Good News About Unconditional Transfers to the Global Poor,” Slate May 29, 2013
Matthew Yglesias
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 28, 2013 | Research
In the latest of several articles on Basic Income for Slate magazine (see earlier articles), Matthew Yglesias reports on a pilot project in Uganda. The project found “recipients of one-off lump-sum cash transfers earn substantially higher annual incomes two and four years after the intervention.”
Yglesias, Matthew, “Good News About Unconditional Transfers to the Global Poor,” Slate May 29, 2013
Matthew Yglesias
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jul 5, 2013 | Opinion
Nicola Jones and Andy Sumner, Child Poverty, Evidence and Policy, Policy Press, 2011, xii + 250 pp, pbk, 1 847 42445 7, £23.99, hbk, 1 847 42446 4, £65
The authors’ purpose isn’t entirely described by the title or subtitle. They claim in their introduction that the book ‘is about children’s visibility, voice and vision’ (p.1): that is, about children as agents. Even that isn’t accurate, because we don’t in fact hear children’s own voices and visions in the book. What we hear is adults formulating ways in which we might experience children’s visibility, voice and vision. The questions that the authors ask are these: ‘How can we understand child poverty and well-being? What types of knowledge are being generated about the nature, extent and trends in child poverty and well-being in developing-country contexts? How can this evidence catalyse change to support children’s visibility, voice and vision? Finally, how do these questions play out in different contexts?’ (p.1).
The first part of the book studies concepts of child poverty and well-being, how knowledge about these is generated, how policy is formulated, and how knowledge informs policy. Well-being is understood in relation to a child’s relationships and subjectivity as well as in material terms; there is a detailed discussion of the diversity of evidence available; and policy-formation is understood as a complex process from which children’s voices are frequently excluded.
The second part of the book contains chapters on Africa, on Asia, and on Latin America and the Caribbean. For each continent there are sections on material, relational and subjective well-being; a section on knowledge generation (mainly in relation to information-gathering institutions); a study of the interaction between knowledge gathered and policy formation; and a case study. A concluding chapter emphases the importance of a child-centred approach if child poverty is to be abolished. Throughout the book there are tabulated literature reviews which will be immensely useful to future researchers.
It would have been interesting to have heard the voices of children, particularly in relation to the case studies. It would also have been educational to include a chapter on child poverty in so-called developed countries, and on how visible and audible children are in those countries’ policy processes. Perhaps these areas could be tackled in future publications. It would also be educational to see research findings on how effective particular policy initiatives have been in tackling child poverty as defined in part I of the book, and on how children experience those initiatives – in their own words.
In particular: Does the gradual shift away from service provision and towards conditional cash payments (such as Brazil’s bolsa familia) improve children’s material, relational and subjective well-being? And would a Citizen’s Income improve children’s well-being further? (See our report on a Namibian Citizen’s Income pilot project in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, issue 2 for 2009). In evaluating the outcomes, children’s voices will be crucial, as this book rightly suggests.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jun 14, 2013 | Opinion
Götz Werner and Adrienne Goehler, 1000€ für Jeden: Freiheit, Gleichheit, Grundeinkommen [€1000 for each person: freedom, equality, Basic Income] Ullstein, 2010, 267 pp, pbk, 978 3 548 37421 5, £6.56
It is unusual for us to review foreign language books in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, but an exception surely has to be made for this German book which has been a consistent bestseller, significantly in the ‘business’ category. 1 (Because the book’s content is so tightly tied to the German context it is unlikely to be translated into English, which is why we are reviewing the German text rather than waiting for an English translation.)
The first part of the book discusses the German political context and the Citizen’s Income debate within it. This is followed by sections on what the authors take to be essential elements of the definition of a Citizen’s Income: large enough to cover subsistence needs; for every individual; without means-test; and without work-test. Objections are then answered, particularly in relation to labour market participation. An interesting section uses the fact that most lottery winners remain in the labour market as important evidence. The concept of ‘work’ is then broadened beyond the labour market, and a variety of imagined personal situations show how a Citizen’s Income would promote diverse kinds of work.
Werner is a successful entrepreneur, so perhaps it is not surprising that rather too much space is then given to how workplaces have changed during the past few decades and how they might be further humanised with the help of a Citizen’s Income. Even more space is then given to the German education system and how it might be reformed.
The authors discuss implementation of a Citizen’s Income scheme, and suggest that it should be paid first for children and young people and then to older people (largely because women’s historically low labour market participation means that they are often ill-prepared financially for old age). An interesting section suggests that the income security we need was once provided by the family but now cannot be, and that only a Citizen’s Income will be able to fill the gap.
A chapter on the results of the Namibian Citizen’s Income pilot project contains too much about microcredit.
1000€ per month is a lot of money. The authors intend to pay for a Citizen’s Income this large through taxing consumption rather than income and by abolishing most other government expenditure. They write rather too much about consumption taxes and are somewhat unrealistic about the level at which they might be collectable. Whether we would wish to abolish other public expenditure to the same extent in the UK, in which we already have a universal National Health Service and universal free education based on the same principles as a Citizen’s Income, is rather doubtful.
But the authors are right to ask for radical change. We are no longer a ‘self-help’ agrarian society. We now rely heavily on other people’s work, and therefore belong to a ‘stranger-help’ society. This is a huge paradigm shift, and it suggests that a welfare system based on self-help, as social insurance is, really does now need to be replaced by a system based on ‘stranger-help’, the purest form of which can only be a Citizen’s Income.
This is a somewhat rambling book. There are long sections on matters with only oblique relationships to the Citizen’s Income proposal, and the authors frequently return to issues already discussed. A forceful editor might have prevented the authors from expatiating on their rather irrelevant enthusiasms, and could have helped them to create a more concise, more connected, and better ordered book: but what is really interesting is that this holdall of a book should have become such a best seller. I suspect that this is because within it the magnitude of the changes facing our society are expressed with some feeling, and a proposal radical enough to respond to those changes, and sufficiently feasible for implementation to be conceivable, is expounded with equal feeling. This is above all an enthusiastic book by authors who believe that real change is possible.
Thoroughly recommended to anyone with enough German to read it.
1https://www.buchreport.de/bestseller/bestseller_einzelansicht.htm?tx_bestseller_pi1%5Bisbn%5D=9783430201087
