The COVID‐19 pandemic: Time for a universal basic income?

Johnson, Andrew F.; Roberto, Katherine J.

doi:10.1002/pad.1891

Cited by 36 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…Unfortunately, job automation and autonomous robots have a downside and can lead to mass unemployment. Therefore, Dr. Andrew Johnson and Dr. Katherine Roberto have recently suggested that an unconditional basic income (UBI) could help people financially during the pandemic, especially those who cannot work [44][45][46][47]. UBI could be an effective safety net, especially when combined with retraining programs to teach people the necessary skills to work remotely and/or from home.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Application of remote working and digital marketing assisted with artificial intelligence and robotic technologies reduced the potential economic impact of the lockdown [44,45]. But automation of all works with these technologies reduces human retention and results in unemployment [44,47]. Therefore the economic impact of digitalization and application of artificial intelligence and robotics for the prevention of COVID 19 remained a point of discussion and debate [44][45][46][47].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Optimal strategies for COVID-19 prevention from global evidence achieved through social distancing, stay at home, travel restriction and lockdown: a systematic review

et al. 2021

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Background Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a global public health agenda with high level of pandemicity. There is no effective treatment, but prevention strategies can alter the pandemic. However, the effectiveness of existing preventive measures and strategies is inconclusive. Therefore, this study aimed to review evidence related to COVID-19 prevention achieved through social distancing, stay at home, travel ban and lockdown in order to determine best practices. Methods/design This review has been conducted in accordance with the PRISMA and Cochrane guideline. A systematic literature search of articles archived from major medical databases (MEDLINE, SCOPUS, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Web of Science) and Google scholar was done. Observational and modeling researches published to date with information on COVID-19 prevention like social distancing, stay at home, travel ban and lockdown were included. The articles were screened by two experts. Risk of bias of included studies was assessed through ROBINS-I tool and the certainty of evidence was graded using the GRADE approach for the main outcomes. The findings were presented by narration and in tabular form. Results A total of 25 studies was included in the review. The studies consistently reported the benefit of social distancing, stay at home, travel restriction and lockdown measures. Mandatory social distancing reduced the daily growth rate by 9.1%, contacts by 7–9 folds, median number of infections by 92% and epidemic resolved in day 90. Travel restriction and lockdown averted 70.5% of exported cases in china and doubling time was increased from 2 to 4 days. It reduced contacts by 80% and decreased the initial R0, and the number of infected individuals decreased by 91.14%. Stay at home was associated with a 48.6 and 59.8% reduction in weekly morbidity and fatality. Obligatory, long term and early initiated programs were more effective. Conclusion Social distancing, stay at home, travel restriction and lockdown are effective to COVID-19 prevention. The strategies need to be obligatory, initiated early, implemented in large scale, and for a longer period of time. Combinations of the programs are more effective. However, the income of individuals should be guaranteed and supported.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimal strategies for COVID-19 prevention from global evidence achieved through social distancing, stay at home, travel restriction and lockdown: a systematic review

et al. 2021

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“…The significant increase in unemployment rates signals a rise in the often-high human costs associated with layoffs that may not be mediated by residual welfare state provisions. For example, in March 2020, the U.S. approved a means-tested, one-time stimulus check to eligible taxpayers; however, the fund did not provide a lasting benefit as several million in the United States still were forced to draw unemployment benefits (Johnson and Roberto, 2020). With layoffs leading to workers' ruptured attachment to their employer and the labor market itself, unemployment hysteresis, in which the jobless never return to work, may take over, resulting in more irreversible harms to the worker, family, labor market and society.…”

Section: Unemployment: Human Costs and Hysteresis Risk Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A growing number of studies claim that a more univeralistic approach, such as UBI programs, address food security, mental health, may keep the most vulnerable in the population out of poverty (e.g. Johnson and Roberto, 2020;Ståhl and MacEachen, 2020). Few have compared and evaluated the employment and income support policies enacted across nations in response to the pandemic.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Employment and income support policies during the early phases of COVID-19: Lessons from the U.S., Denmark, and Taiwan

Yang

Briar‐Lawson

Urbaeva

2020

GSWR

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As COVID-19 spread across the world in 2020, health and economic activities have been impacted, and unemployment has risen across many countries. The consequences have been particularly harmful to vulnerable populations such as women, racial minorities, or part-time workers. While many governments enacted employment and income support policies as a response to this economic and health crisis, there has been a lack of comparative and evaluative reviews of how policies have addressed unemployment and inequality during the pandemic. In this study, we draw on Esping-Andersen’s (1990) frame of a liberal versus social-democratic welfare state to contextualize some employment and income support polices during the early phases of COVID-19 from the U.S., Denmark, and Taiwan, aiming to enhance the understanding of such policies. We found that the U.S., being more aligned with a liberal welfare state regime, relied on more market mechanisms to address labor and employment issues. Denmark and Taiwan, being more aligned with a social-democratic welfare state, enacted more interventions in and redistributions outside of the market to address employment problems. The human costs of unemployment and unemployment and labor market hysteresis are addressed in light of these two different approaches and outcomes.

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“…Several high-income countries, such as Canada and New Zealand, have moved to provide some form of emergency income support to assist their citizens who are financially impacted by the pandemic [ 23 , 24 ]. However, many argue that these temporary benefits will not be able to sustainably address the widespread and long-term impact of COVID-19 [ 25 , 26 ]. Instead, a permanent BI can be explored as a potential solution to reduce this gap and bring positive impacts to various aspects of people’s lives, including their health and overall quality of lives [ 27 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring different methods to evaluate the impact of basic income interventions: a systematic review

Pinto

Perri

Pedersen³

et al. 2021

Int J Equity Health

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Background Persistent income inequality, the increase in precarious employment, the inadequacy of many welfare systems, and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have increased interest in Basic Income (BI) interventions. Ensuring that social interventions, such as BI, are evaluated appropriately is key to ensuring their overall effectiveness. This systematic review therefore aims to report on available methods and domains of assessment, which have been used to evaluate BI interventions. These findings will assist in informing future program and research development and implementation. Methods Studies were identified through systematic searches of the indexed and grey literature (Databases included: Scopus, Embase, Medline, CINAHL, Web of Science, ProQuest databases, EBSCOhost Research Databases, and PsycINFO), hand-searching reference lists of included studies, and recommendations from experts. Citations were independently reviewed by two study team members. We included studies that reported on methods used to evaluate the impact of BI, incorporated primary data from an observational or experimental study, or were a protocol for a future BI study. We extracted information on the BI intervention, context and evaluation method. Results 86 eligible articles reported on 10 distinct BI interventions from the last six decades. Workforce participation was the most common outcome of interest among BI evaluations in the 1960–1980 era. During the 2000s, studies of BI expanded to include outcomes related to health, educational attainment, housing and other key facets of life impacted by individuals’ income. Many BI interventions were tested in randomized controlled trials with data collected through surveys at multiple time points. Conclusions Over the last two decades, the assessment of the impact of BI interventions has evolved to include a wide array of outcomes. This shift in evaluation outcomes reflects the current hypothesis that investing in BI can result in lower spending on health and social care. Methods of evaluation ranged but emphasized the use of randomization, surveys, and existing data sources (i.e., administrative data). Our findings can inform future BI intervention studies and interventions by providing an overview of how previous BI interventions have been evaluated and commenting on the effectiveness of these methods. Registration This systematic review was registered with PROSPERO (CRD 42016051218).

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The COVID‐19 pandemic: Time for a universal basic income?

Abstract: COVID-19, economic relief, universal basic income Economic impact Direct Direct Direct Up to a year Up to a year Direct

Cited by 36 publications

References 5 publications

Optimal strategies for COVID-19 prevention from global evidence achieved through social distancing, stay at home, travel restriction and lockdown: a systematic review

Optimal strategies for COVID-19 prevention from global evidence achieved through social distancing, stay at home, travel restriction and lockdown: a systematic review

Employment and income support policies during the early phases of COVID-19: Lessons from the U.S., Denmark, and Taiwan

Exploring different methods to evaluate the impact of basic income interventions: a systematic review

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