Pull Up the Roots
Veteran
Thousands of people in Kenya are getting basic income for 12 years in an experiment that could redefine social welfare around the world.
WESTERN KENYA — In a Kenyan village, cows with visible ribs saunter in the fields, here and there bowing their heads to graze. The countryside is sprawling, dry, and, above all, poor.
Gathered at a community meeting in October 2016, villagers listened as a representative from the charity GiveDirectly announced its plans to give everyone a standard salary just for being alive. The payments were part of a system known as universal basic income, or UBI. GiveDirectly's was about to become the largest such experiment ever conducted.
Fourteen months since the study launched, GiveDirectly says it has anecdotal evidence that UBI is reducing poverty and that some of the biggest concerns about giving people free money are unfounded.
And while critics contend that basic income encourages people to form bad habits, people in GiveDirectly's village more often rebuild their roofs and pay for their kids' education than quit work and let their lives waste away.
A once radical idea, UBI is taking hold in nearly a dozen countries and cities worldwide.
If recipients in GiveDirectly's Kenyan village demonstrate that the UBI model can work, governments watching the experiment may start rethinking their social-welfare policies and, with the right supplemental research, enact basic-income programs that could lift billions of people out of poverty.
http://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-study-kenya-redefining-nature-of-work-2018-1
I'll admit, I'm a little ignorant wrt UBI and would be grateful to anyone for providing some required reading on the subject.
- Across dozens of Kenyan villages, thousands of people are enrolled in an experiment that gives them nearly double their normal income for up to 12 years.
- The experiment is testing "universal basic income," an idea for reducing poverty that establishes an income floor.
- GiveDirectly, the charity running the experiment, will analyze spending data to learn how basic income affects factors like quality of life and gender equality.
- Basic income advocates think the study could transform how governments around the world think about social welfare.
WESTERN KENYA — In a Kenyan village, cows with visible ribs saunter in the fields, here and there bowing their heads to graze. The countryside is sprawling, dry, and, above all, poor.
Gathered at a community meeting in October 2016, villagers listened as a representative from the charity GiveDirectly announced its plans to give everyone a standard salary just for being alive. The payments were part of a system known as universal basic income, or UBI. GiveDirectly's was about to become the largest such experiment ever conducted.
Fourteen months since the study launched, GiveDirectly says it has anecdotal evidence that UBI is reducing poverty and that some of the biggest concerns about giving people free money are unfounded.
And while critics contend that basic income encourages people to form bad habits, people in GiveDirectly's village more often rebuild their roofs and pay for their kids' education than quit work and let their lives waste away.
A once radical idea, UBI is taking hold in nearly a dozen countries and cities worldwide.
If recipients in GiveDirectly's Kenyan village demonstrate that the UBI model can work, governments watching the experiment may start rethinking their social-welfare policies and, with the right supplemental research, enact basic-income programs that could lift billions of people out of poverty.
http://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-study-kenya-redefining-nature-of-work-2018-1
I'll admit, I'm a little ignorant wrt UBI and would be grateful to anyone for providing some required reading on the subject.
to this.