[ad_1]
The backing came from a two-year guaranteed income project at the University of Stockton that unconditionally issued checks for $ 500 each month to 125 low-income residents.
Preliminary to the program’s first year, which ended in 2020. In February, analysis showed that participants who received checks were “healthier, showed fewer signs of depression and anxiety, and had higher life satisfaction” than participants in the group. control who received no benefits.
They also experienced fewer monthly fluctuations in household income. Most importantly, they did better in finding permanent employment or improving their positions. This reverses the common conservative argument that such programs will deter job applicants and turn beneficiaries into profligates.
According to the analysis, at the beginning of the study period, in 2019. in February, 28 percent. beneficiaries worked full time; a year later they were already 40 percent. For comparison, in the control group this indicator of 32 percent. increased to 37 percent during the year.
In other words, beneficiaries found permanent jobs twice as often as members of the control group, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“We’ve seen that people could use that $ 500 to apply and complete a job application – if you work part-time and care for a child, you have very little free time every day,” says the Los Angeles Times. , Stacia West, a social work agency expert from the University of Tennessee. “Lack of money creates lack of time.”
S. West says that this finding surprised him more than other more experienced program developers in the target community.
“My colleagues weren’t surprised at all,” West said. “They realized that when you have financial limitations, you never have to think ahead.”
S. West conducted the analysis with Amy Castro Baker of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. They are currently preparing a second-year analysis, which should be published in September. This will end the program, officially called the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED). The last
the checks were distributed to recipients in January.
Study concludes: low-income people plan better
S. West and AC Baker contributed to the development of the Stockton program, but their findings are consistent with results from analyzes of other universal basic income programs. Studies have not found a decline in labor market participation, unless it is slight. Some of these changes may be due to beneficiaries leaving work to care for other family members at home.
No study found evidence that scholarships were treated like manna from heaven that could be freely wasted. S. West and AC Baker say less than 1 percent. Stockton’s checks were written for tobacco or alcohol.
As of 2017, a universal base income expert noted, “Poor people and the middle class know best how to spend money. They just don’t have them. “
The Los Angeles Times writes that the pandemic highlighted the benefits of universal base income, in part by highlighting structural inequality in the American economy. Lower-income households have become more vulnerable in the last year and are more likely to lose their jobs or rise above the poverty line due to reduced working hours and higher spending on childcare after the close of business. school. They were also less likely to avoid infection by staying home rather than continuing to go to work, increasing their chances of becoming infected.
Money, dollars
The pandemic has significantly increased interest in the idea of a universal basic income. One of the largest programs of its kind has started in Compton, where the Compton Pledge was just announced: 800 city residents will receive between $ 300 and $ 600 a month for two years. Pilot programs have also been launched in St. Pole, Minnesota, Richmond, Virginia, Pittsburgh, Auckland, and several other communities.
Information can be obtained on how recipients will spend these unconditional scholarships from another program, the $ 1,200 allocation that most adults received under the CARES Act passed in late March. These benefits worked in much the same way as Stockton’s guaranteed benefits: they were distributed unconditionally to people with lower incomes (CARES checks were distributed to people with less than $ 75,000 a year, as well as couples with a total income of less than $ 75,000 a year). 150). 000).
According to the Los Angeles Times, according to the US Census Bureau, nearly 90 percent in adult households with incomes of $ 25,000 or less, the money received was spent on household expenses. About 80 percent. these recipients spent money on food and 78 percent. – rent, mortgage and utilities, that is, payment of gas, electricity, cable TV, internet and mobile services.
“These reports show that state benefits have helped cover basic costs like housing and food,” the Census Bureau said.
The highest-income households, those with incomes over $ 75,000 a year, used checks to cover debts or put them in a savings account.
People with lower incomes plan their expenses better than those with higher incomes. They know your income to the last penny and make sound financial decisions based on it. Poverty is not the result of bad individual decisions; it is the result of policies that oppress people.
Stacia West
S. West and AC Baker have not yet compiled all the statistics for the second year of the Stockton project, which largely coincided with the pandemic quarantine.
Yet there are signs that scholarship recipients have responded to the prospect of long-term foreclosure on their homes in the same way as non-program families: by storing food and other essentials.
„[2020 m.] In February and March, we saw a sharp rise in the cost of groceries and other necessities, especially at big box stores like Costco and Walmart, West notes.
One study participant, who started feeling COVID symptoms in the spring, admitted to researchers that if she hadn’t had that $ 500 airbag, she would have kept working. In other words, the basic income allowed her to feel more secure and protect her co-workers and clients.
The SEED program distributed monthly checks of $ 500 to residents in urban areas where the median income was lower than the city median, but no income limits were set for individual recipients. Invitations were sent to 4,200 households in the area. Members of the study and control group were randomly selected from the respondents. SEED supporters have tried to align the program with government programs so that increases in family income do not deprive families of the right to other benefits.
“People with lower incomes plan their expenses better than those with higher incomes,” West said. – They know your income to the last penny and make sound financial decisions based on it. Poverty is not the result of bad individual decisions; it is the result of policies that oppress the people. “
It is strictly forbidden to use the information published by DELFI on other websites, in the media or elsewhere, or to distribute our material in any way without consent, and if consent has been obtained, it is necessary to indicate DELFI as the source.
[ad_2]
