by Kate McFarland | May 9, 2017 | News
Researchers in several Dutch municipalities are preparing experiments to test the effects of the removal of conditions on social assistance. Although not testing basic income per se, the experiments will examine one of its key attributes (the reduction of conditionality).
This year, popular sources have occasionally continued to report that the Dutch city of Utrecht is preparing to launch–or has already launched–a pilot study of universal basic income (sometimes continuing to cite a now-outdated article published in The Atlantic in June 2016). In this light, it is particularly important to clarify the facts surrounding the Dutch social assistance experiments.
It is true that researchers have proposed experiments in several Dutch municipalities that will examine the effects of reducing conditions on welfare benefits, including the removal of job-seeking requirements and a lessening in the amount benefits are reduced with income. However, as explained below, these experiments will not test a full-fledged basic income. Moreover, at the time of this writing, none of the municipal social experiments have been launched: those in Groningen, Tilburg, and Wageningen are awaiting approval from the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs; meanwhile, the experiment in Utrecht has been delayed indefinitely, having been denied approval by the Ministry.
Background: The Participation Act, Motivation, and Design
The Dutch Participation Act, enacted in 2015, imposes conditions on recipients of social welfare that are intended to promote their reintegration into paid employment. For example, beneficiaries are typically required to complete five job applications per week, attend group meetings, and participate in training activities in order to continue receive cash assistance.
Researchers at Utrecht University School of Economics, such as Loek Groot and Timo Verlaat, have criticized the conditions and sanctions imposed by the Participation Act from standpoint of behavioral economics. Research in behavioral economics has demonstrated, for example, that performing tasks for monetary rewards can “crowd out” individuals’ intrinsic motivation to perform such tasks. Furthermore, deprivation and fear of losing benefits may engender a scarcity mindset that impedes rational decision making. Drawing from such findings, researchers like Groot and Verlaat have hypothesized that reducing conditions on welfare benefits would better promote individuals’ reintegration and productive contributions to society (see, e.g., “Utrecht University and City of Utrecht start experiment to study alternative forms of social assistance,” last accessed May 6, 2017; note that the start date mentioned in the article, May 1, is no longer accurate).
The social experiments proposed in Utrecht and other Dutch municipalities have been designed to test the above hypothesis: randomly selected welfare recipients (who agree to participate) will be randomly assigned either to a control group or a treatment group, one in which reintegration requirements on receipt of benefits will be removed. (Although the exact design of the experiments has differed between municipalities–and between versions of the proposal–all have included a treatment group with the elimination of job-seeking conditions. Proposals experiments have also included groups with different interventions, such as, in several recent versions, increased reintegration requirements and relaxation on means-testing; see below.) These treatment groups will be compared to a control group, as well as a reference group composed of individuals not selected for the experiment, with respect to outcomes such as labor market participation, debt, health, and life-satisfaction.
Meanwhile, however, researchers must grapple with another consequence of the Participation Act: the law limits the extent to which they are legally permitted to test alternative welfare policies. For one, as mentioned in a previous Basic Income News article, the Ministry of Social Affairs has required that the municipal officials overseeing the experiment must check after six and twelve months to determine whether experimental subjects have made sufficient efforts to find paid work. At these times, if an individual has been found to have undertaken too few employment-promoting activities, their participation in the experiment must be ended. This constraint reintroduces some degree of conditionality even for treatment groups in which the requirement to participate in reintegration activities has been lifted from social assistance.
In addition, the Ministry has also requested that experiments include an additional treatment group in which stricter reintegration requirements are introduced. The experiments proposed for the municipalities of Tilburg, Wageningen, and Groningen, are currently under review by the Ministry, include such a treatment group; the initial (and unapproval) design of the Utrecht experiment did not.
Relationship to Basic Income
Largely for political reasons, proponents of the Dutch social experiments have avoided the use of the term ‘basic income’ (‘basisinkomen’ in Dutch), with researchers in Utrecht calling their proposed experiment by the name ‘Weten Wat Werkt’ (English: ‘Know What Works’). (In the Netherlands, “basic income” is often associated with the stereotype of “giving free money to lazy people”.)
This avoidance is apt, however, since the experiments have indeed not been designed to test a universal and fully unconditional basic income. The designs of the experiments have either not been finalized or are still pending government approval (see below). Regardless, however, it seems certain that any of the experiments (if approved) will test policies that differ from a basic income in several key respects. First, the population of the experiment is not “universal”; participants are to be selected from current welfare recipients (as is also the case in Finland’s Basic Income Experiment, launched on January 1, 2017, which has also been designed to test the labor market effects of the removal of conditions on welfare benefits for the unemployed).
Furthermore, within the treatment conditions themselves, the benefit will remain means-tested and household-based (rather than individual-based), in both respects unlike a basic income. In all designs proposed to date, participants within all treatment groups will have their benefits reduced if they take a paid job during the course of the experiment. However, the Tilburg, Wageningen, and Groningen experiments, as currently planned, will include a treatment group in which benefits would be reduced at slower rate (50% of earned income instead of 75%).
In the latter respects, the Dutch municipal experiments bear more similarity to the Ontario Basic Income Pilot than Finland’s Basic Income Experiment [1]. While the Finnish pilot is indeed investigating non-means-tested benefits paid to individuals, the pilot studies in Ontario and (if approved) the Netherlands will continue to work with programs in which the amount of benefits depend on income and household status; however, in all cases, many conditionalities on benefits will be removed in some experimental conditions.
Despite these differences, some view the Dutch social assistance experiments as a possible step toward a full-fledged basic income. Moreover, as seen above, the experiments have been motivated largely by arguments from behavioral economics that have previously been invoked in arguments in favor of the unconditionality of basic income (see, e.g., the 2009 Basic Income Studies article “Behavioral Economics and The Basic Income Guarantee” by Wesley J. Pech).
Status of the Experiments
In contrast to some rumors and media presentations, none of the proposed social assistance experiments in the Netherlands has yet been launched.
The experiment in Utrecht, which had earlier in the year been to declared to have a launch date of May 1, has been deferred. According to a statement about the experiment on the City of Utrecht webpage, “The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment has indicated that we need to do the experiment in a different way. We are discussing how we can conduct the study.”
Researchers are currently considering alternative designs of the experiment that will bring them into compliance with the Participation Act, and no new start date has been announced.
Meanwhile, the Ministry is reviewing experiments proposed in Tilburg, Wageningen, and Groningen, with an announcement expected later in May. As previously mentioned, these experiments have been designed to avoid conflict with the Participation Act, as had been one concern with the originally proposed design of the Utrecht experiment.
Basic Income News will publish a follow-up article of the Dutch municipal experiments, including further details on their design and implementation, after their final approval by the government.
Thanks to Arjen Edzes, Ruud Muffels, and Timo Verlaat for information and updates, and to Florie Barnhoorn and Dave Clegg for reviewing this article.
Photo: Groningen, CC BY 2.0 Bert Kaufmann
[1] I am here using these terms as proper names given by the respective governments, despite the differences between the experimental programs and a basic income as defined by BIEN.
by Adrian Planken | May 3, 2017 | News
Updates from Vereniging Basisinkomen (BIEN-Netherlands), Spring 2017
On 15 March 2017 elections were held for the second chamber in the Netherlands. Many watched in fear that there would be move towards “the wrong populism” as the prime minister called it. This outcome was avoided.
There was less attention to the development with respect to Basic Income. Supporters tended to be disappointed by the fact that none of the parties that were strongly in favour of the policy wouldget a representative in the chamber in the coming years. Several parties in favour of Basic Income were in the race to be elected and secure a representative in the chamber, but all were ultimately unsuccessful, including Vrijzinnige Partij (VP, Liberal Party), De Burger Beweging (DBB, The Citizens Movement), Piraten (Pirate Party), Lokale partij (LidK, Local Parties together), BIP/PvdK/V&R (Basic Income Party, Party for the interest of Children and the Party for Freedom and Right, respectively, who operated in a joint venture), and the Greens (not to be confused with Green Left).
However, Alexander de Roo, the current chairman of the Vereniging Basisinkomen, BIEN’s affiliate in the Netherlands, takes it with a smile and proposes to look at the overall figures:
Let’s see when we put together all parties that are left and/or progressive (in a broad sense), i.e. Left: Green Left (GL, 14), Socialist Party (SP, 14), the Labour Party (PvdA, 9).Progressive: Democrats 66 (D66, 19), Party for the Animals (PvdD, 5). In total 61 seats in the chamber from now on. (With a little bit of wishful thinking we could count the Christian Party (CU, 5) and Denk (3) to it and reach a total of 69 seats.)
To the right: The Liberals (VVD, 33), Christian Democrats (CDA, 19), the populist Parties (Wilders, 20), Forum for Democrats (2), 50+ Party (4). In total 81 seats.
Given these figures, he proposes to cooperate with the PvdD, GL, and D66 in an effort to keep the Basic Income on the political agenda.
In the meantime, there have been several developments in the Netherlands since the beginning of 2017.
1. In January, Terneuzen – a community of around 54,770 inhabitants in the Province Zeeland – reached the news headlines because of an initiative of a City Council Member for an experiment to remove conditions on public assistance. The experiment would involve the removal of some rules and regulations for a group of recipients of it in a Terneuzen neighbourhood. This initiative was quickly swept from the table by the government, however, based on the stipulations in the Participation Law (see: https://daskapital.nl/2017/01/ministerie_schiet_plan_basisin.html).
2. In preparation for the elections of the 15 March, Vereniging Basisinkomen made a videoclip to attract more public attention to Basic Income:
3. In February, the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) published its report about the internalization of costs of the election programmes. Amongst them, the election programme of the VP (a new and very small liberal party) contains a proposal for a Basic Income in the amount of € 800 per month. The report presents Basic Income as a very high expense, which would result in insufficient funding for social security and high tax increases. The VP replied in detail in its publication “Comments on CPB report”. Unfortunately, the VP did not get enough votes to be represented in the chamber.
4. In an effort to design a better scheme for realising an UBI, a “mini symposium” was organized for 10 March 2017. The decision was made to work towards a colloquium on the feasibility of a UBI with experts from different political backgrounds and representatives of the press.
The paper “Basic Income feasible and affordable” was produced as a result of the symposium.
5. As a new campaign item, Vbi has made stickers to put on coins to gain more public awareness of Basic Income.
Cover image: The Binnenhof, CC BY-SA 2.0 Christopher A. Dominic
by Hilde Latour | Mar 5, 2017 | News
A mix of Dutch speakers from different fields, all in favor of a basic income, interactively discussed the concept of a universal basic income (UBI) during the symposium “a basic income, full speed ahead!!” [“het basisinkomen, volle kracht vooruit!!”] on January 23rd . The aim was to gather ideas about how to progress to make UBI a reality in the Netherlands as soon as possible. The symposium was organized by “Basisinkomen2018”, the organization behind the petition signed by more than 66,000 citizens (a number that is still growing).
Johan Luijendijk, co-founder of “Basisinkomen2018”, announced a few activities his organization will be organizing and/or funding in the Netherlands such as competitions between universities and informative movies aimed at countering negative preconceptions about a basic income.
He states that supporters can be found in left as well as right wing populations, but the image of a basic income is that of a left wing idea. There is still a lack of understanding of the concept of a basic income and many still believe it will make people lazy. There is also an obstinate, Calvinistic opinion in the Netherlands that one has to work for every penny, argues Luijendijk.
The audience expressed the need for a clear overview of each political party’s stance on basic income in the Netherlands. (On March 15th, the country’s Parliamentary elections will take place).
“Overall, the idea of a basic income is very much alive in the Netherlands, and Basisinkomen2018 will continue to invest in explaining the concept to the people,” Luijendijk assured the audience. An explanatory animation about basic income was introduced during the meeting, including strategic instructions about how to share it (not all at once).
According to Reinier Castelein, chairman of a Trade Union “de Unie” (financial sector), very few trade unions focus on a basic income because they are traditionally focused on work. However, he went on to say:
“An ever-increasing number of people are living on social benefits. Unemployment is increasing and will continue to increase, especially if you realize you disappear from the statistics when you don’t apply for jobs anymore. In the financial sector alone, 60,000 jobs have disappeared and more are expected to disappear. Due to the misbehavior of some people at the top of some banks, there is no empathy for these people in society.“
“More and more people are working in multiple small jobs in order to earn enough money for a decent living. With a basic income, unemployment can be abolished.” Castelein continues, “a basic income would contribute to a redistribution of work and income with less working hours a week, creating possibilities for participation in caring roles or other (currently unpaid, but useful) work.” People from the audience complemented these expected results with positive effects on health, decreasing criminality, and more room for creativity and contribution to solutions for the problems in society.
Employees can better focus on their work if they are not distracted by the struggle to make a living and the quality of work will improve under such circumstances, argues Ton Stuy, an employer in the transportation sector.
“With a basic income you can take away discontent and it is an answer to Brexit and Trump’s protectionism. Furthermore, a basic income creates room for lowering wages and it will not cost more than the crazy things we spend money on now, “ he states.
With respect to the affordability of a basic income, Stuy argues: “If you invest in the well-being of people, it will come back and therefore it will not cost anything, but will even be profitable. Employers who treat their employees well should get more attention.”
Liesbeth van Tongeren, a politician from the Green Left party (“GroenLinks”), compares the discussions about basic income with the discussions about the abolishment of slavery and the discussions about women’s empowerment in the past. In both cases, people originally argued it would be unaffordable and an unachievable goal. Eventually both turned out to be achievable and affordable.
The concept of a basic income also touches the question of what is appreciated: effort or the economic benefits? Many people say, “My job is a useless job, nothing would change if I didn’t do my job.” In reaction to the remark of Ton Stuy, who thinks a basic income will have a decreasing effect on wages, van Tongeren argues that the effect will be in both ways: some jobs will be paid more and others less. It will change the established hierarchy in society and it will also change the interrelationship of many men and women. These effects cause anxiety, according to van Tongeren.
For van Tongeren, the reality is that more and more people are falling out of the system. At the same time, 90 billion euros a month are created and spent in Europe in the context of quantitative easing. This money could instead be divided amongst the European citizens, which would be a good start. It would help if the IMF would make a statement about it in this context, van Tongeren states.
George van Houts, from the theater group The Seducers (“De Verleiders”), shares his experience with the audience and explains the role theater can play in the discussion about the current financial system. His theater group played several pieces around this topic and attracted full theatres. “We are informed by a group of scientists (Our Money, “Ons Geld”), who check if the information is accurate.” Van Houts explains that money is made by commercial banks, as debt.
“We performed a play around this topic at the Dutch central bank (“De Nederlandsche Bank, DNB”), and we were not argued against, but Klaas Knot (President of the DNB) asked why we would worry the people. ”Many top bankers know something will have to change, as the system is about to burst, according to van Houts. The responsibility of the creation of money should be given back to the government and it should not be created as debt, which is the case now.
Van Houts indicates a parallel system is already in place: the DNB-coin (similar to the bitcoin). This system can function parallel to the euro and people could be given a bank account at the DNB, which could be used for a basic income, for example. This could then be managed by a public organization that is not dependent on ‘voters’ favour’.
A basic income is inevitable, according to Jan Rotmans, Professor in Sustainability Transitions at Drift (Erasmus University Rotterdam). He supports this prediction by comparing the current stage of the “digital revolution” with the industrial revolution of the 19th century. “We live in a time of chaos, anxiety and social inequality, but eventually, the optimists were right.” The most important resistance comes from within, Rotmans explains. “It is better to have one small success story than many meetings trying to think it all through in order to implement it on a large scale. Just start doing it. Examples of such small scale initiatives in The Netherlands are the crowd funded basic income project in Groningen and the initiative in Terneuzen.” (The city council of Terneuzen thought they had found a way to implement a basic income for a small group of citizens on social benefits, but a few days after the symposium the central government claimed it was illegal). The technological developments are causing a battlefield in the middle part of the working-class and this is likely to cause a downward spiral of fear that “it will happen to me”. “Can we keep everyone at work? No,” so radical solutions are necessary, according to Rotmans, one of which can be a basic income.
Info and links
Special thanks to Josh Martin and Jenna van Draanen for reviewing this article
Photo: symposium a basic income, full speed ahead!!, January 2017, Rotterdam the Netherlands by Hilde Latour (at the desk from left to right: George van Houts, Jan Rotmans, Liesbeth van Tongeren and Johan Luijendijk)
by Hilde Latour | Jan 18, 2017 | News
On December 15th 2016, the ‘committee for citizens’ initiatives’ decided not to allow a discussion in Dutch Parliament about the proposal, organized by Basisinkomen2018, to implement a universal basic income (UBI) in 2018.
Although enough citizens signed the citizens’ initiative (more than the threshold of 40.000), UBI will not be discussed in Parliament because it already has been discussed in reaction to the ‘note of initiative’ (“initiatiefnota”) of the member of parliament Norbert Klein in September last year.
The rule is that a topic cannot be forced onto the agenda by means of a citizens’ initiative if it has been discussed in the past two years.
Klein’s proposal was submitted after the start of the citizens’ initiative, it was only discussed (and not decided about) in a meeting of the committee of social affairs and did not concern an implementation of a UBI (it asked for more research). Nevertheless, the ‘committee for citizens’ initiatives’ (one of its members being Norbert Klein) decided the proposal did not meet the criteria to be admitted for discussion in Parliament.
In reaction to this decision, Norbert Klein spoke in the House of Representatives, “To the 65,000 people that signed this citizens’ initiative, the procedural side is of course subordinate to the content. That’s why I consider the great support for the basic income as especially valuable and as a support for me to continue to push for a basic income. The basic income is on the agenda and will remain on the agenda in 2017.”
Johan Luijendijk, Pieter Parmentier and Michael Amendeone from Basisinkomen2018 are disappointed but remain positive:
“We will invite the political parties ourselves. We organized a symposium: Basic Income, Full Power Ahead (“Het Basisinkomen, Volle Kracht Vooruit“) that will be held on January 23rd. We are honored that a union leader (Reinier Castelein), a scientist (Jan Rotmans), a theater man (George van Houts) and an entrepreneur (Tom Stuij) want to contribute to the discussion as convinced ambassadors of a UBI.”
No more seats are available for this symposium, which emphasizes the popularity of the concept of a UBI in The Netherlands.
Info and links
NETHERLANDS: 58,800 people sign petition calling for a parliamentary debate on basic income [Florie Barnhoorn]
Special thanks to Josh Martin and Danny Pearlberg for reviewing this article
Photo: The plenary hall of the Tweede Kamer (“Second Chamber”), the Dutch Parliament by JVL, CC-BY-SA 2.0
by Hilde Latour | Jan 8, 2017 | News
At the party’s congress on December 17th, members of Dutch political party Green Left (“Groen Links”) were given the opportunity to vote on amendments to its election program. This document will be released soon, in advance of the country’s parliamentary elections, which will be held on March 15th, 2017.
In the draft version of the election program, a basic income was only mentioned as a possible means to reform the social welfare system.
Two amendments concerning a universal basic income (UBI) were voted on at the party’s congress:
- Implementation of a UBI
“Green Left supports the (eventual) implementation of an unconditional basic income for everyone, high enough to live decently from. Unconditional economic security will lead to possibilities for a fairer distribution of paid jobs, caregiving, volunteer work and income. In addition to that, it will facilitate entrepreneurship. Starting point is that the lowest incomes will not decrease and the basic income will be co-financed through progressive income taxes. Existing additional financial support for citizens in specific circumstances can continue to exist.”
- Experimenting with a UBI
“Implementation of a national representative experiment of a universal basic income, to be conducted on a large-scale and over several years, aimed at a better understanding of the effects on people’s behaviour.”
Before the voting took place, the board of the party advised members to reject both of the amendments, arguing:
“an unconditional basic income is a bridge too far, as an unconditional basic income uses tax money to support people who don’t need it”.
But the members decided differently: approximately 80% of those present, voted in favour of the second amendment: to start a nationwide experiment of a universal basic income.
The first amendment, concerning the implementation of a UBI failed in a much closer vote: 53% rejected this proposal.
“We now are working hard to make changes in the text of the election program and the definite version will be available soon”, Christel Kohlmann (Head Strategy and Information of the party) explains. It could not be confirmed whether the experiments would really be aimed at a UBI for everyone, however.
For comparison, the currently planned experiments in The Netherlands, although they will test elements of basic income, are not examining a representative sample of the entire population. The social security experiments expected to start this year, for example, will examine only a group selected from people currently receiving welfare benefits.
Green Left is now the second Dutch elected political party that is already in Parliament and now in favour of experimenting with a real UBI. (That is, its members are in favour, and with a convincing majority). The Party for the Animals (“Partij voor de Dieren”) is also in favour of a serious experiment with a UBI and has formulated that in their program. In addition to these two parties, sitting Member of Parliament Norbert Klein will participate in the upcoming elections with the Cultural Liberal Party (“Vrijzinnige Partij”). Klein is now in Parliament as an individual member, having left the 50plus party after the last elections. The Cultural Liberal Party is also in favour of research with a universal basic income, and has even produced a rough calculation on how a UBI should be financed.
Compared to the former elections, support for a UBI has clearly spread and grown in The Netherlands. More than 65.000 people already signed a petition and this number is still growing. In the upcoming month, more political parties will have their members voting for amendments to their party programs in advance of the upcoming elections in March.
Info and links
The amendments on a universal basic income can be found on page 75 of the Green Left congress paper (in Dutch).
The election program of Green Left can be found here (when ready and in Dutch).
Information about the upcoming experiments with social welfare can be found here and here (in Dutch).
THE NETHERLANDS: Party for the Animals wants Universal Basic Income to be investigated
[Hilde Latour]
NETHERLANDS: Debate about unconditional Basic Income in Parliament
[Hilde Latour]
Photo: Euro by Alf Melin 2012, CC BY-SA 2.0
Special thanks to Josh Martin and Kate Mc Farland for reviewing this article
