P The Mincome experiment Only two segments of Dauphins labour force worked less as a result of Mincome—new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they werent under as much pressure to support their families. The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. “People didnt have to take the first job that came along,” says Hikel. “They could wait for something better that suited them.” For some, it meant the opportunity to land a job to help them get by. Although the Mincome experiment was intended to provide a body of information to study labour market trends, Forget discovered that Mincome had a significant effect on peoples well being. Two years ago, the professor started studying the health records of Dauphin residents to assess the impacts of the program. In the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent. Fewer people went to the hospital with work-related injuries and there were fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. There were also far fewer mental health visits. Its not hard to see why, says Forget. “When you walk around a hospital, its pretty clear that a lot of the time what were treating are the consequences of poverty,” she says. Give people financial independence and control over their lives and these accidents and illnesses tend to dissipate, says Forget. In todays terms, an 8.5 per cent decrease in hospital visits across Canada would save the government $4 billion annually, by her calculations. And $4 billion is the amount that the federal government is currently trying to save by slashing social programming and arts funding. Having analyzed the health data, Forget is now working on a cost-benefit analysis to see what a guaranteed income program might save the federal government if it were implemented today. She’s already worked with a Senate committee investigating a guaranteed income program for all low-income Canadians. The Canadian governments sudden interest in guaranteed income programs doesnt surprise Forget. Every 10 or 15 years there seems to be a renewed interest in getting Guaranteed Income (GI) programs off the ground, according to Saskatchewan social work professor James Mulvale. Hes researched and written extensively about guaranteed income programs and is also part the Canadian chapter of the Basic Income Earth Network, a worldwide organization that advocates for guaranteed income. GI programs exist in countries like Brazil, Mexico, France and even the state of Alaska. Although people may not recognize it, subtle forms of guaranteed income already exist in Canada, says Mulvale, pointing to the child benefit tax, guaranteed income for seniors and the modest GST/HST rebate program for low-income earners. However, a wider-reaching guaranteed income program would go a long way in decreasing poverty, he says. Mulvale is in favour of a “demo-grant” model of GI that would give automatic cash transfers to everybody in Canada. This kind of plan would also provide the option of taxing higher-income earners at the end of the year so poorer people receive benefits. A model such as this has a higher chance of broad support because it goes out to everybody, according to Mulvale. GI can also be administered as a negative income tax to the poor, meaning theyd receive an amount of money back directly in proportion to what they make each year. “GI by itself wouldnt eliminate poverty but it would go a heck of a long way to decrease the extent of poverty in this country,” says Mulvale. Conservative senator Hugh Segal has been the biggest supporter of this kind of GI, claiming it would eliminate the social assistance programs now administered by the provinces and territories. Rather than having a separate office to administer child tax benefits, welfare, unemployment insurance and income supplement for seniors, they could all be rolled into one GI scheme.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 03:19:03 +0000
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