by Kate McFarland | Mar 1, 2019 | News
The Basic Income Lab at Stanford University has extended its deadline for applications for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the 2019-20 academic year.
Applications are due March 8, 2019.
The postdoctoral fellow will carry out extensive research on basic income experiments, study ongoing pilot designs, review the findings of cash-based programs throughout the world, culminating in a comprehensive report Universal Basic Income: Learning from the Global Evidence Base, which is to be launched at an international event in 2020.
Applicants should have research interests and experience in universal basic income or related cash transfer programs, poverty eradication, or social and economic inequality, and must hold a PhD in economics, political science, public policy, psychology, sociology, or related fields.
See the full description of the position here: https://basicincome.stanford.edu/fellowships/postdoctoral-research-fellow.
Established in February 2017, the Basic Income Lab (BIL) promotes research on the design, implementation, and impact of basic income and related policies, and stimulates discussion on the topic between scholars, policymakers, nonprofit organizations, think tanks, and others.
BIL has collaborated with the National League of Cities to create the toolkit Basic Income In Cities: A Guide to City Experiments and Pilot Projects. At present, BIL is preparing to launch an online platform that will provide a detailed visual representation of existing research on basic income.
Image Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
by Toru Yamamori | Feb 23, 2019 | News
The Green European Foundation (GEF) has published its report on UBI: European Green Perspectives on Basic Income, on 18th February 2019.
GEF is one of the ‘political foundations at European level’ (a.k.a. Eurofoundations) that are research and advocacy organisations funded by the European Parliament.
GEF ran a project ‘Basic Income for all EU citizens?’ for the past two years (2017-2018). This report is one of its outcomes. The report’s forewords by Susanne Rieger and Ville Ylikahri outlines the aim of the project: ‘investigating the [UBI] proposal’s potential in relation to employment, the recognition of work beyond paid work, and the gendered division of the labour’ (p.5). This threefold aim is in sharp contrast to the narrow focus of the Finnish Government experiment run concurrently with the GEF’s project. The Finnish Government only focused on employment and paid no attention to unpaid work and the gender division of labour.
The report contains the accessible introduction, ‘Twelve Questions and Answers on Universal Basic Income’ by Natalie Bennet, a former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. It is followed by 9 substantial articles. The report’s concluding chapter evaluates the EU-wide UBI proposal from ‘Social Europe’ perspective.
GEF continues to work on UBI with its new project ‘Basic Income – European Public Debate’.
You can access PDF of the report or order a hardcopy here.
Image: GEF’s report on UBI, from GEF’s homepage.
Article reviewed by Russel Ingram.
by Andre Coelho | Feb 19, 2019 | News
Children playing in Sikkim, India. Picture credit to: India Today
Anil Sasi’s article starts from the Sikkim announcement to implement a basic income in the state, up until 2022. After describing the basic income concept in broad strokes, explains the Indian tapestry of conditional social benefits, in cash and in kind, which is riddled with inefficiency and corruption. It refers that, so as to finance a basic income, the structure of existing benefit programs would have to be completely changed, “in order to free up resources so that a particular amount can be directed to people on a periodic basis”. From there, Sasi goes on to describe a few of the most relevant basic income-like pilot programs and experiments, using that to contextualize the Sikkim situation.
As in many other regions in the world, the planning for a basic income implementation involves slashing on existing conditional programs, some of which might be rendered obsolete on their own terms (emptied out of beneficiaries, due to mean-testing). Sasi points out, though, that this cutting on governmental subsidy programs might be dangerous, even counterproductive, citing economist Bhalchandra Mungekar, a former member of Rajya Sabha and the Planning Commission. Interestingly enough, however, Mungekar was one of the Congress party leaders to promptly backup Rahul Ghandi’s announcement of a national basic income implementation in India, were the party elected in the next general elections in May.
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Sikkim state is on the verge of becoming the first place on Earth implementing a basic income”, Basic Income News, January 11th 2019
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
Anil Sasi, “Universal Basic Income: The ‘money for nothing’ idea”, The Indian Express, January 11th 2019
by Andre Coelho | Feb 12, 2019 | News
Masked Narodi supporters, in 2014. Picture credit to: Aljazeera
Just a few days after Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party, announced the intention of implementing a “nationwide minimum income for the poor”, Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s government now proposes a “basic income for poor farmers”. This policy was set as a part of a supposedly interim budget, only up to the elections date (May 2019), although in this case expenditure was scheduled up to December 1st 2019, in a clear bet to win these elections and continue in power.
The cited interim budget was presented by (acting) finance minister Piyush Goyal, and the “basic income for poor farmers” is expected to affect millions of small farmers, who will be paid 6000 Rupees per year (84 US$/year), in principle as an unconditional cash transfer. 6000 Rupees averages around 3% of a typical family yearly net living wage (~183000 Rupees), and 6% that of a single adult (96900 Rupees). It is inferred that the hand-out to farmers would be to the farmer, as the owner of the land parcel, hence to his/her family. In this context, the policy promise is not individual (only if the farmer is single and has no dependent children), nor enough to cover minimum necessities (not basic), nor universal (only for farmers). The “basic income” term, therefore, is used by Modi’s government in a very loose manner, which might indicate more of an intent to get an electoral edge, particularly over the latest Congress proposal.
There is a general acceptance in India that transferring money directly to poor people avoids the corruption of the current subsidies system, and so such a policy as a kind of basic income makes sense to many. Unemployment is another important issue, but, interestingly enough, this might be ameliorated by the implementation of a basic income (type of policy), according to Gareth Price, from the Chatham House think tank. This is because direct, unconditional money in the pockets of people will most likely drive an economic expansion. Despite this reasoning, in other allegedly developed nations, such as France, the ability to work in paid jobs is still seen as central to the social contract. There, policy makers are more afraid people will just sit back and give up on contributing with their work to society, than they are confident that basic income will help those at the bottom of the income scale to fully participate in the economy, as workers and consumers.
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
Adam Withnall, “India budget: Modi announces universal basic income for farmers in bid for rural vote ahead of elections”, Independent, February 1st 2019
Expenditure and Living Wage calculation in India
André Coelho, “France: Law proposal to experiment with basic income rejected before even discussed”, Basic Income News, February 10th 2019
by Karl Widerquist | Feb 6, 2019 | Opinion, Research, The Indepentarian
When people ask me where to find empirical research on the effects of Basic Income online, I tend to recommend the following sources, both for the sources themselves and for the many more sources you’ll find in their bibliographies:
Karl Widerquist A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments for Researchers, Policymakers, and Citizens, Palgrave Macmillan, December 2018. In case you can’t find my book at your university library, I posted an early draft of it (and as far as I know everything I write) for free on my personal website.
Karl Widerquist “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” The Journal of Socio-Economics (2005). You can find an early free version here.
Calnitsky, D. (2018) ‘The employer response to the guaranteed annual income’, Socio-Economic Review, 25, 75–25.
Kangas, O., Simanainen, M. and Honkanen, P. (2017) ‘Basic income in the Finnish context’, Intereconomics, 52, 2, 87–91.
Karl Widerquist, “The Cost of Basic Income: Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations,” Basic Income Studies, 2017. Again if you don’t have access through your university, you can find an early version of The Cost of Basic Income on my personal website.
“Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research” is helpful, although only a small part of it is empirical.
Widerquist, K., Howard, M. (Editors) Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining Its Suitability as a Model and Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, two books both published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. Contact the editors (karl@widerquist.com) if you have trouble locating the books.
Evelyn Forget, “The town with no poverty: The health effects of a Canadian guaranteed annual income field experiment,” Canadian Public Policy, 2011
Go to Google Scholar: search “basic income” and/or other names for the concept with our without additional key words to narrow it down. Scroll through as many pages of links as you have time for.
Go through the tables of contents for each issue of the journal Basic Income Studies.
Go through the news on Basic Income News, as far back as you have time for, looking for mentions of and links to new research.
Go to the “Basic Income FAQ/wiki,” on Reddit and look for the empirical articles.
I’m leaving out a lot of good stuff because I can’t find it online, but those things together should give you a good idea of the current state of UBI research.
What links would you add (please answer only if you can give the full information about it including an actual links to it)?
