VIDEO: Evelyn Forget Speaks to Finnish Parliament About Canadian Basic Income Pilot Project
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The leader of the Centre Party of Finland, Juha Sipilä, proposed on September 10th regional basic income experiments to be run in some highunemployment rural and urban areas. The proposal was part of the interpellation on poverty made by the Centre Party and the Left Alliance. Paavo Arhinmäki, the leader of the Left Alliance thanked Sipilä for taking up the issue of basic income. The next day the National Coalition party MP Lasse Männistö expressed his support to Sipilä’s idea on his blog. The rightwing National Coalition is currently the leading party in Finland.
Basic income became one of the topics of parliament’s discussion on the interpellation on poverty on September 23th. Several MPs, among them Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, expressed their support to the idea of basic income pilots.
The Centre Party, which is currently the fourth largest party in Finland, has included the concept of basic income in many of its programmes during the 1990s. However, in its formulations, basic income has often been conditional and granted only to the poor. The Green League and the Left Alliance, which both are mediumsized parties, support unconditional basic income and have released their own models of it (the Green League 2007 and the Left Alliance 2011). The Green League is currently updating its model.
For more information, see the following links:
The Centre Party: “Sipilä Proposes Regional Basic Income Pilot”
Kansan Uutiset, the journal of the Left Alliance: “The Left Thanks Sipilä’s Opening on Basic Income”
The National Coalition Party MP Lasse Männistö’s blog: “To a Basic Income Journey”
Finnish Parliament Plenary Sessions.
The basic income model of the Left Alliance, a paper presented in the BIEN2012 Congress in Munich by Jouko Kajanoja and Pertti Honkanen (in English)
The basic income model of the Green League from 2007 (there is a link to the English version below the graph).
The Sheffield Equality Group has conducted a pilot survey of attitudes twoard basic income. The sample-size was small, and it was gathered without employing randomized sampling techniques. Therefore, the results cannot be considered representative; the author’s “primary aim was to assess the diversity of response, pilot the survey and explore possible results and consideration for a wider scale survey.”
Nevertheless, these initial results are interesting. Only 15% of respondents thought the current welfare system works well for the UK as a whole. 79% agreed People would do more voluntary or unwaged work if they got a basic income. 81% agreed it should be introduced for every UK citizen. And 85% agreed it would help businesses find temporary and flexible workers.
The author, Jason Leman, has worked in survey design and analysis for over a decade. He has researched political involvement and activity as part of gaining a Masters in Research.
An info graphic with some of the results and a link to the full report can be found at:
Sheffield Equality Group, “Basic Income Survey”, Sheffield Equality Group, April 2014.
The full report is online in PDF format:
Jason Leman, “Exploring a Future Welfare State: A Pilot Survey on the Basic Income.” Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Equality Group, March 2013.
Marie Burge, “P.E.I. ideal place to pilot basic income guarantee.” The Guardian, Charlottetown, April 10, 2014.
[Citizens Income Trust]
At a seminar at the University of London on 5 March Guy Standing reported the results of a Citizen’s Income pilot project in which he has been involved in India over the past five years. In recent decades, India has relied on subsidised rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene to reduce poverty, but about three-quarters of the money allocated to the programme never reaches the people for whom it is intended. So an alternative method has now become essential. Cash transfers are the obvious solution, and for the pilot project it was decided that universal, individual, unconditional monthly payments would be the model to be tested. Guy Standing worked with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) on the pilots with finance provided by UNICEF.
There were three pilots. An initial small project in Delhi offered residents of a low-income area a choice between continuing with the subsidised goods or taking a cash transfer of equivalent value. . About half chose the Citizen’s Income. But after a few months of experience, over 20% of those who initially chose the subsidised food and kerosene asked to swap to the Citizen’s Income. All those who had taken the cash wished to remain with it.
The second pilot covered 20 villages in Madhya Pradesh. In eight villages every individual was paid a monthly Citizen’s Income while continuing to receive the subsidised food and kerosene, if they had been receiving them. Initially, each man and each woman received 200 Rupees a month, and each child 100, paid to the mother or surrogate mother. Subsequently, the Citizen’s Income was raised to 300 rupees per month for each adult, and 150 for each child up to the age of 14. These amounts were approximately one third of subsistence income. Twelve similar villages were taken as control villages in what was a modified randomised control trial, enabling the evaluation of the impact to compare individuals over time and with others like them who were not receiving the Citizen’s Income.
A third pilot was conducted in a tribal village, where every adult and every child received 300 or 150 rupees respectively. A second structurally similar tribal village was taken as the control village for comparative analysis.
In each of the 22 villages, a baseline survey (census) was undertaken and then evaluations carried out at six, twelve and eighteen months. In the villages in which a Citizen’s Income was received residents were required to open bank accounts within three months, and over 96% of them did so, the remainder being helped afterwards.
In the villages in which residents received the Citizen’s Income:
· Latrines were built or improved;
· Housing quality improved;
· Mosquito nets and repellents proliferated;
· Child weight-for-age moved closer to the normal distribution, and girls in particular benefited;
· Diets improved, with more fresh fruit and pulses being consumed;
· There was a lower incidence of illness;
· Spending on medical care and on schooling increased;
· 48 disabled people went to hospital when they were ill (and only two in the control villages);
· Secondary school enrolment outstripped enrolment in the control villages, particularly for girls;
· School performance rose;
· Indebtedness fell, and some men managed to escape from debt bondage. In the local naukar system, someone in debt has to work for the person to whom they owe money.
Particularly important results in relation to the critic-isms sometimes levelled at a Citizen’s Income were:
· Alcohol and tobacco use did not rise;
· There was a general increase in economic activity, particularly amongst women;
· The purchase of productive assets increased: goats, chickens, bullocks, buffaloes and sewing machines;
· More people in the Citizen’s Income villages increased their earned incomes than did those in the control villages. (An increase in work days was mainly generated by increases in second main economic activities and by a shift to own-account labour).
· Child labour shifted from external wage labour to work with adult relatives in own-account farming: a form of labour that is less disruptive to schooling.
What is particularly significant about these results is that they were obtained with a Citizen’s Income that was only about one third of subsistence income.
Questions and discussion followed the presentation.
Seminar led by Guy Standing, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, on the 5th March 2014.