{"id":1587,"date":"2019-07-11T15:03:54","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T13:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubi-europe.net\/ubi\/?p=1587"},"modified":"2019-07-11T15:11:13","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T13:11:13","slug":"fake-news-universal-basic-income-doesnt-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubi-europe.net\/ubi\/fake-news-universal-basic-income-doesnt-work\/","title":{"rendered":"FAKE NEWS: Universal Basic Income Doesn\u2019t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Universal Basic Income Doesn\u2019t Work\u2019 Says New Prime Example of Fake\u00a0News<\/h1>\n

Or How to Spot Disinformation in a World of Propaganda<\/h2>\n

\"Go Written by\u00a0Scott Santens<\/a>– First published

Click this link<\/a> to listen to this article on Anchor or your favorite podcast platform<\/p>\n

\"\"In April 2019, a report titled \u201cUniversal Basic Income: A Union Perspective<\/a>\u201d was paid for and published by Public Services International (PSI), a global trade union representing 20 million workers employed around the world providing public services. This report was authored by Anna Coote and Edanur Yazici of the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a British left-leaning think-tank. They concluded that providing services to all is better than providing income to all. In the paragraphs to follow, I intend to explain how this report, and how it was rolled out, is a prime example of a disinformation campaign designed to manipulate public opinion against the idea of universal basic income, and in doing so, I hope to increase the critical-thinking skills of readers to better spot this kind of shameless propaganda in the future about anything, not just UBI.<\/p>\n

How to Propagandize Step 1:\u00a0Titles<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s an unfortunate reality, but in this age of social media we\u2019re in, most people stop at titles. It\u2019s all about the title. Titles don\u2019t even need to faithfully represent what\u2019s in the actual article. It just needs to be something that engages readers enough to click that \u201clike\u201d button, or that \u201cshare\u201d button. It\u2019s also smart to leverage search engine optimization (SEO) strategies so that people more easily find what they\u2019re looking for, and in the case of disinformation, the goal is for people to easily confirm their existing biases.<\/p>\n

For example, if you\u2019re looking for evidence that vaccines cause autism, you\u2019ll do a search for something like \u201cvaccines cause autism.\u201d Through the magic of the internet, you\u2019ll immediately find disinformation to confirm your beliefs that you can then spread like measles to others. The trick is putting the disinformation right in the title. This is exactly what Anna Coote did when she wrote her opinion piece for the Guardian about the report titled, \u201cUniversal basic income doesn\u2019t work. Let\u2019s boost the public realm instead<\/a>.\u201d By putting the disinformation right in the title, it\u2019s easy to find for anyone seeking\u00a0confirmation bias<\/a>\u00a0for the belief \u201cuniversal basic income doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConfirmation bias<\/strong>\u00a0is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one\u2019s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You may notice I\u2019ve done the exact same thing in devising the title for this article you\u2019re reading right now. This is because I too want people looking to confirm their beliefs that basic income doesn\u2019t work, but with the intention of people discovering this article instead of a flaming garbage fire.<\/p>\n

How to Propagandize Step 2: Deception<\/h4>\n

Many of us don\u2019t take note of details like authors and their bios. We just read the article. When I first read Anna Coote\u2019s article, I already knew who she was, and I already knew she\u2019s been an active opponent of basic income for years, but even I missed something extremely important in my first read of her Guardian article, and I missed it because of the way she chose to write it.<\/p>\n

The article appears to be written in the voice of a journalist describing a report they just read. The very first sentence reads, \u201cA study published this week sheds doubt on ambitious claims made for universal basic income (UBI).\u201d A very small percentage of readers will notice that Anna is herself none other than the author of the study she\u2019s writing about.\u00a0She wrote an opinion piece about\u00a0her own report<\/em>\u00a0in a way that deceives the reader into thinking of her as being an objective messenger<\/strong>. Not only that, but her opinion piece is also an extremely slanted representation of her own report. She actually further spun what was already spun.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one example: The report cites multiple sources across multiple countries that the net cost of implementing UBI would be 0% of GDP in a revenue-neutral design, 0.28% of GDP in the UK (for a small UBI), 3% of GDP in the UK and US, 5% of GDP in India, and between 20%-30% of GDP according to an ILO estimate that used gross instead of net costing. Yet in the Guardian, she neglected to mention any of the low estimates. She instead stated, \u201cThe cost of a sufficient UBI scheme would be extremely high,\u201d citing only the ILO gross estimate.<\/p>\n

Why is it so important we differentiate between gross and net cost when it comes to UBI? Because the gross cost of a program that provides money to everyone that everyone pays money into tells us nothing about the cost. Think about it. If everyone paid half of their incomes to receive an income that is equivalent to half of their incomes, what\u2019s the cost of that in terms of GDP? Is it 50%? No. It\u2019s zero. There is no cost to GDP because everyone got rebated what they were taxed.\u00a0The only meaningful estimate of the cost of UBI is thus the\u00a0net<\/em>\u00a0cost<\/strong><\/a>, and the net cost of UBI in terms of GDP is right around 3% in most countries for a poverty floor amount, not 30%, and in revenue-neutral designs where a small UBI is introduced purely through welfare and tax reform, it\u2019s as low as 0% of GDP because no new taxes at all are required.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so frustratingly dishonest is that I know Anna knows this stuff. How? Because not only is it included in her actual report, but it\u2019s been proposed by none other than her own think tank, in a report they published only one month prior titled, \u201cNothing Personal\u200a\u2014\u200aReplacing the Personal Tax Allowance with a Weekly National Allowance<\/a>.\u201d In this report, the NEF concluded that a UBI of \u00a348 per week (about $266 per month) could be implemented without raising any new taxes at all, by simply cashing out the cash allowance portion of the tax code, and taxing people on their first dollar instead of waiting until after they reach \u00a312,500 of earned income.<\/p>\n

This is the most mind-boggling part for me.\u00a0The NEF proposed a revenue-neutral plan for universal basic income<\/strong>, claimed it\u2019s not UBI even though it is (except for the fact they exclude the top 1%), and then published Anna\u2019s report concluding that UBI plans are too expensive. Both can\u2019t be true.<\/p>\n

How to Propagandize Step 3: Claims to Authority<\/h4>\n

Think tanks and those with the deep pockets who fund them have been utilizing this strategy for decades and it\u2019s a proven strategy. It\u2019s how neoliberalism managed to unseat Keynesianism, so it\u2019s no surprise to see left-leaning think tanks engaging in the same tactics to push whatever policies their funders are paying them to push. In the case of Anna\u2019s UBI report, it\u2019s pushing Universal Basic Services (UBS) for a union that would be representing the workers performing those services. It\u2019s no different than the Koch brothers funding a report pushing for more drilling as an alternative to sustainable energy.<\/p>\n

If a think tank report benefits who paid for the report, it doesn\u2019t automatically mean the report is false, but it does mean we should question its veracity. This is where knowledge of the scientific method comes in. The beautiful thing about science is that it\u2019s a way of evaluating the world around us. It\u2019s the most powerful critical thinking tool ever devised. I can\u2019t describe it any better than Carl Sagan, so I\u2019ll just defer to him here:<\/p>\n

\u201cScience is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aCarl\u00a0Sagan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Key to the scientific method is right in the name\u200a\u2014\u200athe method\u200a\u2014\u200aso every scientific paper requires showing one\u2019s methodology so that others can repeat it and see if they can duplicate the findings. That\u2019s another key to science, being open about the how, not just the what. Who cares what you conclude if how you concluded it is the scientific equivalent of pulling it out of your ass?<\/p>\n

The NEF report lacks any methodology. It begins with its conclusions, goes on to discuss what UBI is, the arguments for and against it, how much it would cost, and before discussing proposed alternatives like universal basic services and job guarantees and concluding the alternatives are the way to go, it includes five pages in chapter seven summarizing twelve \u201cexamples of UBI in practice.\u201d These five pages are the \u201cevidence,\u201d upon which this 48-page report is based, and it\u2019s really nothing but another op-ed.<\/p>\n

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Original illustration by\u00a0Sinnerman<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The NEF\u00a0Report<\/h4>\n

First, the report starts by asserting that because universal basic income doesn\u2019t exist anywhere yet, it\u2019s hard to draw any conclusions about it based on any of the evidence, because the evidence is from trials. This is like saying there\u2019s nothing to learn from experiments at all, ever, about anything, because they\u2019re only experiments. That\u2019s an unscientific and nonsensical assertion. If the manipulation of a variable in experimental conditions results in a statistically significant effect compared to a control group, that\u2019s something to learn from, not ignore as pointless because we didn\u2019t observe it for 50 years among a population of 300 million people.<\/p>\n

Next, it claims that save for Alaska and a few others, all of the experiments are actually conditional. The logic here is that negative income experiments target the poor, which is a poor understanding of NIT and UBI. NIT experiments that provide a full amount to those earning $0 and then claw back 50 cents for each dollar earned are effectively modeling a fully universal basic income paired with a 50% flat tax to pay for it. The net amount received is unconditional in that there\u2019s no work requirement and no control of how the money is spent. One could argue that NIT experiments actually do a better job of modeling UBI in practice because any national UBI would have net receivers and net payers because of the taxes imposed to pay for it.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, it claims that\u00a0the UBI experimentation in India<\/a>\u00a0wasn\u2019t unconditional because it required that people open a bank account to receive the funds. Ignoring the fact that the tribal experiment didn\u2019t do that and only the general experiment did (there were two experiments in India), this is a laughable definition of conditionality, especially when the result was that 95.6% of recipients were banked before the experiment began, and the remaining 4% were banked within the next three months, and getting banked was something everyone was helped with to make the experiment possible. In India, 100% of the experimental group comprising entire villages received basic income and yet the NEF report claims it tells us \u201cnothing about the impact of making cash payments to all regardless of income or status<\/em>.\u201d Does that sound true to you?<\/p>\n

Not only is it not true, but again, it\u2019s unscientific to make such a claim that there\u2019s nothing to be learned even when conditions are applied. For example, the report mentions Malawi which provided cash, both conditionally and unconditionally to girls on the condition they stay in school. What I found so interesting about the Malawi study when I first read about it years ago is not mentioned anywhere in this report, which is what happened to those who didn\u2019t meet the conditions compared to those without conditions. It turned out that the unintended consequence of withdrawing income from girls were\u00a0higher rates of teen pregnancy and HIV<\/strong>. Does that result tell us nothing about the impact of unconditional income that when compared to conditional income it reduces the rates of HIV in teens?<\/p>\n

Another claim the report makes is that in developing countries with few existing safety nets, providing cash is helpful but \u201cit calls for a shift in power relations so that the same individuals can control what happens to them, to their families and neighbors and to their environment over the medium and longer-term. They need structures for shared decision-making as well as access to essential resources.<\/em>\u201d This quote in particular really jumped out at me because\u00a0the basic income experiments have these results<\/strong>. In experiment after experiment, basic income shifts power relations to those who have the least power. Individuals have more control over what happens to them because they have more agency as individuals with unconditional incomes, and shared decision-making is exactly what we see more of in basic income experiments.\u00a0As I\u2019ve written about before<\/a>, an extremely common result is people pooling their basic incomes to make collective decisions.<\/p>\n

The report also claims that because the effects of basic income seem to fade once the experiments end, that it\u2019s potentially unsustainable, before going on to conclude that in developing countries, there\u2019s a choice between services or cash, that both can\u2019t be done at the same time, and thus services are better. This argument is nonsense on two accounts. First, basic income is the logic of insulin. Is insulin a bad idea because it needs to be a permanent part of people\u2019s lives? Of course not. Insulin saves lives. The same is true of universal health care. Is universal health care a bad idea because if it ends, the effects of health care fade? Of course not, so their logic contradicts itself. Second, there is no real choice between cash or services. Both can and\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0be provided. The authors simply want to put the two choices against each other as a tactic.<\/p>\n

In the section on UBI in richer countries, this part is especially noteworthy:<\/p>\n

There is not yet any clear evidence about the possible impact of UBI on individuals struggling to cope with penny pinching, stigmatising welfare regimes, or with fast-changing, increasingly automated labour markets. It would be unwise to read across from trial results in poor countries where the context is entirely different. The Mincome and New Jersey trials took place in another, pre-internet era. The Alaska Fund offers an annual dividend from shared wealth: a model with real potential, but one that currently makes payments that are far too small to address either problem. Elsewhere, the idea of UBI has failed to win sufficient political support to test its potential. This is most often because it is considered unaffordable without huge tax hikes that would not win votes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is in fact clear evidence for anyone with any understanding of the scientific method. It is indeed wise to read across from trial results in poor countries to rich countries, because human beings do actually react in identical ways to identical stimuli. As the behavioral economist Dan Ariely replied when asked if what is being learned in GiveDirectly\u2019s 12-year UBI experiment in Kenya could be applied to the US, \u201cIf you think about the fundamental aspect that you\u2019re testing, people are people<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u201d Anna Coote appears to believe that people in India and Kenya are fundamentally different than people in the US and UK, and also that people alive today are fundamentally different than people in the income guarantee experiments of the 1970s. She\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

Over and over again, in experiment after experiment, when income is provided unconditionally, and people are relieved of the fear of starting at zero each month, stress is reduced. This reduction of stress was seen in\u00a0Dauphin in the 1970s<\/a>\u00a0where it led to 8.5% fewer hospitalizations. It improved both physical and mental health. The same effect has been observed in poor countries, and the same effect has been seen in the present day.\u00a0Finland\u2019s experiment just showed this<\/a>, as did\u00a0Ontario\u2019s experiment<\/a>.\u00a0It is an observable fact that unconditional basic income reduces stress<\/strong>. This fact is indisputable. It should also be nothing less than absolute common sense. Of course stress is reduced when people no longer fear not being able to meet their basic survival needs. It\u2019s\u00a0human biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for waving off Alaska\u2019s dividend as being too small, it too has had notable positive impacts despite its size. A\u00a02018 study<\/a>\u00a0concluded that the Alaska dividend has created thousands of new jobs, increasing part-time employment by 17%. In\u00a0a separate study<\/a>, Alaskan researchers found that provided a $1,000 dividend, women in Alaska work one hour less and male employment increases by about 2% because of 2,000 new jobs in the three months following the dividend. Can we apply this to the concern of technological unemployment? Absolutely, because consumers create jobs as a result of having money in their hands to spend. In this way, the size of Alaska\u2019s dividend actually underestimates the amount of new jobs UBI creates. Alaska\u2019s dividend has also been shown to improve birth weights due to improved maternal nutrition and during the 1990s and 2000s the dividend helped Alaska become\u00a0the only US state in which\u00a0equality rose<\/em>\u00a0rather than fell<\/a>. Alaskans also love their dividend so much\u00a0they\u2019d prefer to pay more in taxes than lose it<\/a>. Alaska is\u00a0a treasure trove<\/a>\u00a0of stuff to learn about UBI.<\/p>\n

The report even claims Switzerland as evidence against UBI, because they voted against implementing it, and presumes cost was the reasoning. Two things here: first, can you imagine claiming as evidence against recognizing women\u2019s right to vote, a country\u2019s vote against it? Switzerland wasn\u2019t ready to recognize female suffrage in 1959 either, but they did in 1971.\u00a0UBI will likely follow a similar path in Switzerland<\/a>. Second, although 40% of those who voted no in Switzerland were concerned about cost, that concern was based on a high UBI, and without an understanding of net cost, as discussed previously. Either way, including Switzerland in the evidence section of a summary of UBI evidence is about as unscientific as one can get.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s talk about what was left out of the report.<\/p>\n

How to Propagandize Step 4: Lying by\u00a0Omission<\/h4>\n

A truly tried and true way of lying is to simply not mention key facts. One of the most fascinating things to me about Anna Coote\u2019s NEF report is the evidence it simply omitted. The only way to catch propaganda like this is to be able to spot what\u2019s missing, and that\u2019s much more difficult to do because it requires a time-consuming knowledge base of sufficient size. Most people don\u2019t have that and so rely on \u201cexperts,\u201d and experts know that. Among the most glaring pieces of evidence in this case is Namibia\u2019s UBI pilot, all the experiments in the US in the 1970s other than the New Jersey experiment, and the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth. There\u2019s more excluded than these, but to leave these out is mind-blowing.<\/p>\n

Namibia<\/h4>\n

The Namibia UBI report is one of the most fascinating of all pieces of basic income evidence to read. I recommend reading\u00a0all 103 pages<\/a>\u00a0of the report. You won\u2019t be disappointed. As a quick background, in January 2008, the Basic Income Grant (BIG) pilot project commenced in the Otjivero-Omitara area of Namibia, where for two years, 930 people received N$100 per person per month, without any conditions being attached. It was the first experiment in the world where a flat amount of cash was provided universally, monthly, and for long enough to study its effects. The results were profound.<\/p>\n

The percentage of people living below the food poverty line dropped from 76% to 37%. The percentage of people engaged in income-generating activities rose from 44% to 55%. Self-employment dramatically grew by 301%. Child malnutrition fell from 42% to 10%. School dropout rates fell from 40% to 5%. Average debt fell from N$1,215 to N$772. Overall crime rates plummeted by 42%. There was less need for women to engage in transactional sex, and aside from the very first payout, alcohol use did not increase.<\/p>\n

It was also determined that the cost to implement UBI in Namibia would be under 3% of GDP and because Namibia could handle taxing over 30% of GDP and were only taxing 25%, that UBI would be entirely affordable in Namibia by just bumping their VAT rate and introducing a levy on natural resources.<\/p>\n

It should be clear now how absurd it is to have excluded Namibia from the NEF report, but also understandable why they chose to dishonestly omit it.<\/p>\n

The American Income Maintenance Experiments<\/h4>\n

Another odd exclusion is everything learned in the US in the 1960s and 1970s experiments. There were actually four different experiments: the\u00a0New Jersey Graduated Work Incentive Experiment<\/a>\u00a0from 1968\u20131972 in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the\u00a0Gary Income Maintenance Experiment (GIME)<\/a>\u00a0in Gary, Indiana from 1971\u20131974, the\u00a0Rural Income Maintenance Experiment (RIME)<\/a>in North Carolina and Iowa from 1970\u20131972, and\u00a0the Seattle\/Denver Income Maintenance Experiments (SIME\/DIME)<\/a>\u00a0in Seattle, Washington and Denver, Colorado from 1969\u20131982.<\/p>\n

Each of these experiments tested different amounts of income and different clawback rates in different population groups. The largest of all the experiments took place in Seattle and Denver where 4,800 people compared to New Jersey\u2019s 1,200 received guaranteed income, some for as long as eight years compared to New Jersey\u2019s three years, and thus excluding it from the NEF report is another alarm bell. Why exclude the largest longest experiment about guaranteed income that the US has ever done?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have an answer to that question, but I can tell you the general findings which is that men barely reduced their hours and when they did, it was a per year reduction where they spent more time looking for jobs between jobs. New mothers decided to use the money like paid maternity leave, and young students decided to focus on going to school instead of augmenting family incomes with wage work. The former effect is great for wages and productivity, and the latter effects are great for society. Those were the effects on work. There were also other effects observed, but they were not the focus of the experiments. Here is how\u00a0Karl Widerquist has summarized the non-labor-market effects<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The experimental results for various quality-of-life indicators were substantial and encouraging. Some studies found significant positive influences in elementary school attendance rates, teacher ratings, and test scores. Some studies found that children in the experimental group stayed in school significantly longer than children in the control group. Some found an increase in adults going on to continuing education. Some of the experiments found desirable effects on many important quality-of-life indicators, including reduced incidents of low-birth-weight babies, increased food consumption, and increased nutritional content of the diet. Some even found reduced domestic abuse and reduced psychiatric emergencies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The NEF report mentions none of this and instead only refers to the entirety of the American experiments with a single sentence in the main body of the report in the evidence section: \u201cThe Mincome and New Jersey trials took place in another, pre-internet era.\u201d That\u2019s it. That\u2019s all there is outside of the appendix in regards to lessons learned from\u00a014 years of experiments involving 8,624 Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Great Smoky Mountains Study<\/h4>\n

Perhaps the strongest piece of UBI evidence of all outside of Alaska\u2019s annual dividend is what began in North Carolina in 1996 and exists to this day where members of the Cherokee Nation receive around $12,000 per year in dividend income. This is valuable on its own for research purposes, but what puts this into the category of scientific experiment is that a long-term study of impoverished kids was already ongoing when a percentage of the parents suddenly started receiving the no-strings income. Those kids whose parents did not receive any dividend income became the control group, and to this day, more and more is being learned about the results of kids being raised by parents receiving basic income.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0a 2010 peer-reviewed study<\/a>, behavioral problems for the children lifted out of poverty by the dividend income fell 40%. By 16, they were 22% less likely to have a criminal record. By 21 they gained on average one additional year of education. Personality tests showed improvements in conscientiousness by 43% and agreeableness by 31%. For context, people who lack conscientiousness tend to lie, break rules, and have trouble paying attention, and those who are more agreeable tend to be more comfortable around people and have more aptness for teamwork. Both traits are strongly correlated with more life success and happiness. All these positive results on the kids were found to have happened mostly by alleviating the stress of their parents. Less stressed parents were able to create better home environments where they spent more quality time with their kids, and those are the kinds of changes in a child\u2019s life that can make all the difference in the world.<\/p>\n

Another fascinating finding from this natural experiment was by Randall Akee, an economist whose analysis revealed that\u00a0the dividend income net reduced expenditures<\/a>, meaning the amount of poverty eliminated was actually worth more than the total amount of dividends disbursed, by way of reduced criminality, reduced need for psychiatric care, and the savings gained by kids not repeating grades. In other words, the basic income saved more money than it cost.\u00a0It even increased voter turnout rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So why was what we\u2019ve been learning in North Carolina for over 20 years also excluded from the NEF report?<\/p>\n

I hope it\u2019s clear by now just how irresponsibly dishonest and poorly done the NEF report is, but to make it absolutely crystal clear, it\u2019s also important to see what an honest and well-researched report actually looks like.<\/p>\n

How to Propagandize Step 5: Misdirection<\/h4>\n

Propagandists rely on misdirection. By showing people falsehoods, using sleight of hand, what\u2019s true goes unseen. It takes time and energy to figure out what to trust and what not to trust. If you\u2019re reading this, you may or may not already trust me, and if you aren\u2019t already familiar with my work, that\u2019s wise of you. Make up your own mind, and to help you do that, I\u2019d like to point you to two reports that like the NEF report both analyze a large collection of experimental data, and you can decide for yourself if they seem more trustworthy: one looks at 16 income guarantee trials, and the other looks at 165 studies of 56 cash transfer programs across 30 countries.<\/p>\n

The Gilbert Review of\u00a0Evidence<\/h4>\n

In 2018, Richard Gilbert of Loyola Marymount University along with four other co-authors published a comprehensive review in the peer-reviewed journal\u00a0Basic Income Studies<\/em>\u00a0titled \u201cWould a Basic Income Guarantee Reduce the Motivation to Work? An Analysis of Labor Responses in 16 Trial Programs<\/a>\u201d Among the 16 programs looked at were the basic income trials that NEF included as well as the Namibia experiment and the three American Income Maintenance experiments that NEF omitted.<\/p>\n

If you take the time to look at the methodology they used, you\u2019ll find they focused solely on work effects and filtered an initial set of 1,400 papers down to a data set focused on the impact of cash guarantees on adult work rates, which they then coded so as to isolate variables for analysis. Income guarantee sizes were made comparable to each other across countries by benchmarking against average national income figures in order to examine whether there\u2019s an association between the proportional size of an income guarantee and subsequent labor impacts.<\/p>\n

Statistical tests on the resulting coded data showed that 71% of the data on labor force participation rates supported the hypothesis of a small or no\u00a0increase<\/em>\u00a0in labor force participation, and 100% of the working hours data found reductions of less than 1 to 4 hours of work per week assuming a standard 40-hour work week. When the LPR data and hours worked data were combined:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe results indicate that 27 out of 29 results, or 93%, support the prediction that a basic income program would have a limited impact on work activity when the criterion is set at between a 2.1% and 5% decline in labor force participation or less than a 1 to 2 hour reduction in a standard 40-hour work week.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The results of this meta-analysis cannot be overstated. A data set representing a sample size of 105,000 recipients of guaranteed income across 12 nations in the developed and developing world found no evidence to support the widespread assumption that basic income would cause humans to do anything more than slightly reduce their time spent working. In fact,\u00a0increases<\/em>in work were found in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Namibia, and Uganda.<\/p>\n

One caveat for these results is that the average annual income across all 16 trials was 6.8% of the national average annual income, and thus may underestimate work reductions where small work reductions were seen. For example, 6.8% would represent a basic income in the US of $285 per month. A basic income of $1,000 could have the same negligible impact of 38\u201339 hours worked per week on average, or it could look more like 34\u201337 hours worked per week. Or the impact of increased consumer spending could lead to an average increase in work. All that we can really say with certainty is that basic income is extremely unlikely to lead to significant work reductions with a poverty level amount.<\/p>\n

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The ODI Review of\u00a0Evidence<\/h4>\n

The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is an independent, global think tank focused on research and analysis. In 2016 they published a massive review of the evidence from 56 cash transfer programs all over the world that happened between 2000 and 2015, titled \u201cCash transfers: what does the evidence say?<\/a>\u201d The exhaustive 300-page review looked at the impact of cash on monetary poverty, education, health and nutrition, savings, investment and production, employment, and empowerment. The key findings were reported as follows:<\/p>\n