by Peter Knight | Dec 28, 2023 | Events, News
When: Friday 5th January 2024, 14:00 – 15:30
Where: Oxford Real Farming Conference 2024, Blue Boar House, INTER-VARSITY ROOM
Facilitators: Hamish Evans, Dot Tiwari, Jake Richardson & Kathleen Pollitt
Speaker: Guy Standing
“From labourers to landowners, livelihoods in agriculture are often precarious. A lack of funded pathways into farming makes careers in producing food both hard to access and difficult to sustain. Finding ways to support these livelihoods will be critical to building the resilient, sustainable and just local food systems we need. This is an interactive workshop as well as the launch of the campaign, with initial insights from a year of hosting conversations with farmers around the UK. BI4FARMERS is a campaign created by a fresh working group of growers, farmworkers, farmers, academics and union co-ordinators. The aim of the campaign is to encourage farmers and food producers to discuss possible solutions to the financial barriers they face.”
To learn more and book online tickets, click here
by Peter Knight | Dec 21, 2023 | News
A new report on a recently concluded statewide guaranteed income pilot program with immigrant families shows how unrestricted cash assistance programs allowed low-wage earners to pursue better jobs, increase their educational levels, and improve other critical outcomes for their children.
“The NM Economic Relief Working Group’s 18-month guaranteed income (GI) pilot selected 330 mixed-immigration status households to receive unconditional direct cash transfers of $500 monthly for 12 months from February 2022 to February 2023. One-third of households sampled came from rural communities and two-thirds from urban communities. An additional extension was granted to 50 randomly-selected mixed-status households to receive $500 monthly for an additional 6 months (February 2023-August 2023).
Immigrant families were chosen for the pilot because polling showed these families struggled significantly more than the general population during the pandemic because of numerous exclusions from the country’s safety net; these exclusions were due to lack of a social security number even if the household had U.S.-citizen children. In addition, many immigrant parents are not eligible for public safety-net programs, such as unemployment insurance, even though many are essential workers, make substantial tax contributions, and have positive economic impacts on our communities, state, and nation.
After receiving guaranteed income checks for a year:
• Rural participants reporting increases in employment: 14% increase
• Urban participants reporting having unstable work schedules: 36% decrease
• Rural participants reporting having unstable work schedules: 17% decrease
• Participants reporting, they had trouble paying the rent or mortgage on time: 35% decrease
• Participants reporting having to reduce or forego expenses for basic household necessities, such as medicine or food, in order to pay the rent or mortgage: 9% decrease
• Urban participants reporting having to reduce or forego expenses for basic household necessities, such as medicine or food, in order to pay the rent or mortgage: 18% decrease
Also, as part of its advocacy, the ERWG obtained a state rule change so that receiving regular GI payments do not count as income and thus do not negatively impact recipients’ SNAP or TANF allotments. ERWG’s longer term goal is to get the State of New Mexico to provide economic supports to participants in workforce development projects, specifically childcare, home health care and the oil & gas industries.
The report, “Guaranteed Income: Increasing Employment and Helping Families Thrive,” on the New Mexico Guaranteed Income Pilot Program for Immigrant Families, was released on December 12, 2023.”
Here is a link to the report and the fact sheet.
by Peter Knight | Aug 30, 2023 | News
In the eighth edition of Eduardo Suplicy’s book, Citizen’s Income: The Way out is through the Door (Renda de Cidadania: A Saída É Pela Porta) there is a dialog between Suplicy and now re-elected President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva on the occasion of Suplicy’s 80th birthday in 2022. Here is an English translation of part of that dialog:
“I think that, after the pandemic, Basic Income will return with much greater strength, and that it is not possible that we will not succeed in getting the world to adopt it. If Brazil has a democratic president who cares, the BRICS may adopt it. South America may begin to do this, we can evolve beginning with the realization of our vulnerabilities when we governed this country that we didn’t succeed in establishing certain policies.”
At the 22nd BIEN Congress in Seoul that ended August 26, Suplicy announced that he is proposing to President Lula the creation of a working group to study how to gradually implement the universalization of Basic Income in Brazil.
by Peter Knight | Jun 22, 2023 | Events, News
The Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) were commissioned by Welsh Government officials, to hold a conference for academics working in the fields of basic income and children’s social care. The conference was held virtually on December 15th 2022 and was well attended by 70 academics.
WCPP has made available a highlights pack (see links at the end of this article) during the week commencing Monday 19th June 2023. The highlights pack includes
- An overview of the event
- Links to videos of keynote speakers, including video messages from
- the Minister for Social Justice and Chief Whip and the Deputy Minister for Social Services
- An outline of the contributions from speakers including a video recording
- A summary of the questions to speakers
- Discussion
- Resources and biographies
Purpose of event:
The purpose of the event was to enable the Welsh Government to draw upon the best available research evidence about the implementation and impact of basic income schemes and wider support for care leavers. The event aimed to provide opportunities for discussion of;
- The Basic Income for Care Leavers in Wales pilot and the evaluation that the Welsh Government has commissioned;
- Key lessons from other research on basic income schemes;
- Ways to support or strengthen the Welsh Government evaluation; and
- Additional policies that could complement the Basic Income Pilot Scheme and increase its impact.
Speakers:
Chaired by Professor Steve Martin (WCPP), the conference included contributions from
- Sir Professor Michael Marmot
- Professor Sally Holland, David Westlake (CASCADE),
- Professor Guy Standing,
- Dr Miriam Laker – Oketta (Give Directly),
- Hannah Webster (Royal Society of Arts),
- Dr Eleanor Ott (Centre for Evidence and Implementation).
Discussion:
The conference was positively received by the academic community and provided Welsh Government Officials with insight from academics on the approach to evaluating the pilot. On the whole the audience were very positive both towards the pilot and the research and evaluation programme supporting it. It provided a strong endorsement of the approach which the Welsh Government is taking.
Key messages included the need for greater qualitative data and the benefit of creative and participatory methods. This was planned and has since been addressed by adding a new in-depth qualitative research using ethnographic methods module to the evaluation contract.
Other key points included the need for meaningful and ethical participation, this has been at the forefront of the evaluation since its inception. Furthermore, delegates pointed to the importance of building a legacy for the evaluation and using information that is already available to researchers. Useful pointers and personal connections were achieved and Welsh Government Officials are working with the evaluators (CASCADE) to provide a longer term research framework.
For an article on Five Key Takeaways from the conference, click here.
To download a Powerpoint presentation complete with live links to multiple resources including videos of speaker presentations, click here.
To view a pdf of the Powerpoint presentation without live links, click here.
by Peter Knight | Jun 15, 2023 | Events, News
The Basic Income Society and How to Get There
1:15-4.15 PM, Thursday 20 July
Event link is here
Update July 12: We have changed our plans for the conference because of the rail strike on Thursday 20th July. We will postpone the in-person Basic Income North conference and instead have a Basic Income North symposium from 1.15pm to 4.15pm on the same day. This is to be followed by a series of 30-minute fortnightly ‘deep dive’ conversations with experts on different aspects of Basic Income later in the year. Speakers include Andy Burnham, Kate Pickett and others. More info can be found here and the schedule of the day:
UBI Lab Manchester and the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) North have been working hard to put together a fantastic programme for this year’s conference. Speakers who are joining us so far include:
- Mayor Andy Burnham – mayor of Greater Manchester
- Councillor Astrid Johnson – Leader of the Green Group on Manchester City Council
- Professor Kate Pickett – author of The Spirit Level
- Jonathan Williams – UBI Lab Wales, who has been involved in the Care Leavers’ BI Pilot
- Dr Simon Duffy – Citizen Network
- Caroline Richardson – Spartacus
- Dr Elliot Johnson – Northumbria University
- Maddy Radcliff – Musicians’ Union
- Dr Dave Beck – Salford University
- Laura Bannister- Equal Right
It will be a fascinating day looking at Basic Income and the climate, homelessness, ethical business, disability, the unions and more. The day will evolve from more theoretical discussions on UBI to how we can make it a reality. We will hear about the pilots both running and proposed in Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England.
