What is the impact of a basic income on employment?

What is the estimated change in employment (measured as time worked) of people granted a basic income? I will leave the parameters of what exactly counts as a basic income intentionally open, but I'm roughly thinking of long-term, unconditional cash transfers with an amount roughly the poverty line. I'll take a global view including both high and low income countries. It does not necessarily have to be universal. (If you think any of these factors would make a big difference to this question, please comment!) A basic income program may replace some existing government programs and may also require added taxes to fund it, in which case this question is about the net effect of the changes implemented. I will split the range of possible answers into buckets, and resolve to one of those (not any other answers). I will resolve based on some combination of studies discussed here and market consensus. Here are some studies to start off with: Finland 2-year pilot study found a very small increase in employment. See https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income or https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/results-of-the-basic-income-experiment-small-employment-effects-better-perceived-economic-security-and-mental-wellbeing. The number I could find was 0.8% increase from a preliminary version of the report (so far I couldn't find an English version of the final report). This study replaced some existing benefits, including unemployment insurance, with the unconditional cash transfer. So to me it's not at all surprising that it would find a slight increase in employment - it effectively decreased the recipients' marginal tax rates. In fact, some consider the study a "failure" because it didn't find a larger inrease in employment - but this is attributed largely to limitations of the study design. Either way, it's clear that this pilot did not find a decrease in employment. "The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes" https://izajodm.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40176-018-0131-9 - this meta-review found that unconditional cash transfers resulted in little to no change in labor. Some of the studies it looks at found various impacts mostly in the single-digit percents, both positive and negative. I'm picking very wide buckets here because based on an initial glance at some studies I doubt we'll have a very precise resolution. Related: https://manifold.markets/ManifoldMarkets/universal-basic-income-should-exist May 22, 10:15am: I will resolve PROB with an attempt at the distribution of outcomes found in studies. That is, the distribution of average findings across many different studies. Close date updated to 2022-06-05 11:59 pm

#	Name	Total profit
1		Ṁ201
2		Ṁ4
3		Ṁ3
4		Ṁ2
5		Ṁ2

🏅 Top traders

People are also trading

Related questions