Basic Income and Social Sustainability in Post-Growth Economies

Abstract

A central task in efforts to identify pathways to ecologically and socially sustainable economies is to reduce inequality and poverty while reducing material consumption, which has recently inspired future post-growth scenarios. We build a model to explore the potential of a universal basic income (UBI) to serve these objectives. Starting from the observation that post-growth trajectories can take very different forms we analyze UBI in two scenarios advanced in the literature. Comparing UBI in a “local self-sufficiency” economy to a UBI in an “automation” economy, we show that although both scenarios satisfy central sustainability criteria, the impact of a UBI would differ greatly between these contexts. Our analysis shows that a UBI is less compatible with a labor-intensive local self-sufficiency economy than a capital-intensive, high tech economy. We conclude that the feasibility and attractiveness of a UBI in a post-growth scenario depends greatly on the specific characteristics of the economy.

Barriers to institutional social sustainability

“…Due to its relevance, the eradication of extreme poverty is the first target of SDG 1 (UN 2015 ). To address this issue, Malmaeus et al ( 2020 ) advocate the need for universal basic income models to ensure that people have access to their basic survival needs, comprising an important instrument of social sustainability.…”

The Welfare State: Will It Stay or Will It Go?

“…Yet, to quote another Swedish Journalist (Schultz 2020), "Corona has resurrected the thoughts about citizen wage" (as basic income is called in Sweden). Although the Finnish experiment with UBI led to ambiguous results (happier people with no jobs), the researchers from IVL Swedish Environmental Research analyzed two possible scenarios for introducing UBI in Sweden, treated as an example of a post-growth economy (Malmaeus et al 2020). The scenarios are called "Local self-sufficiency" and "Automation", and the authors concluded that a full UBI is a more realistic option in the Automation scenario.…”

Evaluating Basic Income, Basic Service, and Basic Voucher for Social and Ecological Sustainability

“…Meanwhile, the Ecological Constraint Principle is focused on the importance of considering ecological sustainability when designing policy. In this case, the implication is that efforts to ensure social sustainability are not automatically linked to principles behind ecological sustainability [1]. For example, several policy benefits paid as rights do not necessarily have a positive ecological effect.…”

“…The recent COVID-19 pandemic has proved that the ecological crisis is not just a temporary disaster and cannot be resolved by a temporary state response. Accordingly, discussions on whether the current welfare capitalist system can guarantee ecological sustainability and how the Social and Ecological Transition (SET) can be achieved have been increasing [1][2][3][4]. The argument that environmental problems are no longer disasters/occurrences and that they should be viewed as "historical/social problems" caused by the characteristics of modern capitalism [5] is gaining more attention.…”