Mark Drakeford, First Minister of the Government of Wales (center), Beth Winter, Labor MP for Cynon Valley, and Guy Standing, co-president of BIEN, at the Labor Party Conference
There will be a basic income experiment in Wales in 2022. The First Minister in the devolved Welsh government, Mark Drakeford, has announced his full commitment to rolling it out in the Spring. Following an opinion poll showing that 69% of Welsh people wanted their government to conduct a basic income pilot, the Future Generations Commission arranged for a background report to be prepared, and at an event at the Labor Party Conference in the seaside town of Brighton, Mark Drakeford said he intended to devote the remainder of his time in office to advancing basic income in Wales. He was sharing the platform with Guy Standing, co-president of BIEN, who is advising the Government and Commission on the design of the proposed experiment. Coordinating the plans is the Taskforce for Tackling Poverty in the Welsh Government, headed by Sarah King.
At present, the main proposal is to give basic incomes to “care leavers”, that is, young people emerging into adulthood from care homes. If restricted to those, it would not be a proper basic income pilot, which requires everybody within a geographic community to be covered. In effect, it would be a test of an individual, unconditional modest cash transfer. Given the UK government’s rigid adherence to strict conditional means-tested benefits, which is causing widespread deprivation and a regime of sanctions, the proposed pilot could still prove valuable. However, discussions on the design, sampling and duration are still ongoing. Everything depends on resource constraints.
「探訪ベーシックインカム」は、2月の終わりに「Bring Basic Income To The State」というキャンペーンを開始し、「探訪ベーシックインカム」のウェブサイトやメーリングリスト、ドイツのUBIコミュニティに属する諸団体、ソーシャルメディア、新聞などを経由して、全てのドイツ市民に向けてとある質問を拡散した。
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.
出现这样的情况,部分是因为 UBI 影响的复杂性,部分是因为伦理上的分歧,UBI 不适合用类似于疫苗是否安全有效的简单的底线问题去决策。在医学意义上,UBI既安全又有效。 UBI 将提高净受益人的收入,而无需让他们承担任何工作义务或证明他们有需要,并且不会使他们患上荨麻疹或出现任何其他医疗并发症。关于 UBI 的主要分歧不在于未知数,而在于其众所周知的影响的伦理价值:无论低收入人群是否工作,政府提高低收入人群收入的政策是对还是错?人们根据他们对这个道德问题的回答,以一种或另一种方式下定决心(做决策)都是合理的。
UBI 是否可以显著提高净受益人的收入(无论他们是否工作)这一问题几乎没有任何实证调查,因为有压倒性的证据证明其能,且几乎没有异议;分歧在于是否应该这样做。对 UBI 影响的实证研究几乎无法解决基本的道德分歧。我们可以问一个问题,X 美元的 UBI 是否可持续,但对于 X 的大多数相关水平,这个问题是毫无疑问的,并且答案只会对支持 X 美元 UBI 的人群具有决定性。 UBI 的反对者和怀疑者基本上并不是因为认为提议的水平是不可持续的,否则政治辩论中的人都会是UBI的支持者,只是对金额的高低有分歧而已。
研究人员可以将他们的实验结果与其他来源的证据结合起来,并使用模拟模型等工具将对照组和实验组之间的差异转化为对实际市场结果的估计。他们可以将这些结果与更多数据和模型结合起来,将市场结果的估计与具有不同道德立场的人关切的各种底线问题的估计答案联系起来。但这将涉及在 UBI 实验之外进行更多的非实验性研究。他们的结果将更多地由这些模型的假设和其他证据来源驱动,而不是由他们正在报告的实验的实际发现驱动。
我最近的书《研究人员、政策制定者和公民基本收入实验的批判性分析》探讨了进行和报告 UBI 实验结果的难度,以通过UBI实验帮助研究人员、政策制定者和公民尽可能多地获得有用的知识。 [3] 本文试图总结该书中的一些最重要的论点。
[1] This article summarizes and draws heavily on the book, A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments for Researchers, Policymakers, and Citizens, Karl Widerquist, Palgrave Macmillan 2018. I summarized that book very differently in the article, “The Devil’s in the Caveats: A Brief Discussion of the Difficulties of Basic Income Experiments,” Karl Widerquist, CESifo Forum 19 (3), September 2018, 30-35.
With the theme, ‘From the COVID-19 Disaster to New Great Transition, Basic Income!’ the 3rd annual Basic Income International Conference was held in Gyeonggi Provence, South Korea, 28-29 April 2021. Hosted by the Gyeonggi Provincial Government, and organised by Gyeonggi Research Institute (GRI), Gyeonggi-do Market Revitalization Agency (GMRA), KINTEX, and the Basic Income Korean Network (BIKN), it featured panel talks and discussion by many researchers from BIEN, including Chair Sarath Davala, Hyosang Ahn, Philippe Van Parijs, Guy Standing, Annie Miller, Troy Henderson, Louise Haagh, Almaz Zelleke, Julio Linares, Roberto Merrill among others. Economist Joseph Stiglitz gave a keynote speech on the second day.