IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bistud/v13y2018i2p12n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Would a Basic Income Guarantee Reduce the Motivation to Work? An Analysis of Labor Responses in 16 Trial Programs

Author

Listed:
  • Gilbert Richard

    (Psychology, Loyola Marymount University Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Los Angeles, CA, USA)

  • Murphy Nora A.

    (Psychology, Loyola Marymount University Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Los Angeles, CA, USA)

  • Stepka Allison

    (Psychology, Loyola Marymount University Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Los Angeles, CA, USA)

  • Barrett Mark

    (RAND Corp, Santa Monica, CA, USA)

  • Worku Dianne

    (Psychology and Economics, Loyola Marymount University Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Los Angeles, CA, USA)

Abstract

Many opponents of BIG programs believe that receiving guaranteed subsistence income would act as a strong disincentive to work. In contrast, various areas of empirical research in psychology (studies of intrinsic motivation; non-pecuniary benefits of work on social identity and purpose; and reactions to financial windfalls such as lottery winnings) suggest that a BIG would not lead to meaningful reductions in work. To test these competing predictions, a comprehensive review of BIG outcome studies reporting data on adult labor responses was conducted. The results indicate that 93 % of reported outcomes support the prediction of no meaningful work reductions when the criterion for support is set at less than a 5 % decrease in either average hours worked per week or the rate of labor participation. Overall, these results indicate that adult labor responses would show no substantial impact following a BIG intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilbert Richard & Murphy Nora A. & Stepka Allison & Barrett Mark & Worku Dianne, 2018. "Would a Basic Income Guarantee Reduce the Motivation to Work? An Analysis of Labor Responses in 16 Trial Programs," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-12, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bistud:v:13:y:2018:i:2:p:12:n:4
    DOI: 10.1515/bis-2018-0011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bis-2018-0011
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bis-2018-0011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Galiani, Sebastian & McEwan, Patrick J., 2013. "The heterogeneous impact of conditional cash transfers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 85-96.
    2. Hum, Derek & Simpson, Wayne, 1993. "Economic Response to a Guaranteed Annual Income: Experience from Canada and the United States," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(1), pages 263-296, January.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo, 2020. "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(6), pages 2188-2244.
    4. Fernando Fernandez & Victor Saldarriaga, 2014. "Do benefit recipients change their labor supply after receiving the cash transfer? Evidence from the Peruvian Juntos program," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-30, December.
    5. Banerjee, Abhijit & Hanna, Rema & Kreindler, Gabriel & Olken, Benjamin A., 2015. "Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient: Evidence from Cash Transfer Programs Worldwide," Working Paper Series 15-076, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo, 2017. "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series dp-297, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    7. Kenneth C. Kehrer & John F. McDonald & Robert A. Moffitt, "undated". "Final Report of the Gary Income Maintenance Experiment: Labor Supply," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 51df25f673f04a369a8883ba4, Mathematica Policy Research.
    8. María Alzúa & Guillermo Cruces & Laura Ripani, 2013. "Welfare programs and labor supply in developing countries: experimental evidence from Latin America," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(4), pages 1255-1284, October.
    9. Emmanuel Skoufias & Mishel Unar & Teresa Gonzalez de Cossio, 2013. "The poverty impacts of cash and in-kind transfers: experimental evidence from rural Mexico," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(4), pages 401-429, December.
    10. World Bank, 2013. "Philippines Conditional Cash Transfer Program : Impact Evaluation 2012," World Bank Publications - Reports 13244, The World Bank Group.
    11. Abhijit Banerjee & Rema Hanna & Gabriel Kreindler & Benjamin A. Olken, 2015. "Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient," CID Working Papers 308, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Margherita Calderone, 2017. "Are there different spillover effects from cash transfers to men and women? Impacts on investments in education in post-war Uganda," WIDER Working Paper Series 093, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Santiago Garganta & Leonardo Gasparini & Mariana Marchionni, 2017. "Cash transfers and female labor force participation: the case of AUH in Argentina," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, December.
    3. repec:jpe:journl:1974 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Rema Hanna & Gabriel E. Kreindler & Benjamin A. Olken, 2017. "Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient: Evidence from Cash Transfer Programs," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 32(2), pages 155-184.
    5. Palacios, Alfredo, 2016. "Impacto de los Programas de Transferencias de Ingresos en la Calidad de la Vivienda Familiar: Evidencia para el Plan de Inclusión Social, Argentina [Impact of Cash Transfer Programs on the Quality ," MPRA Paper 102482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Margherita Calderone, 2017. "Are there different spillover effects from cash transfers to men and women?: Impacts on investments in education in post-war Uganda," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-93, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Matias Busso & Dario Romero Fonseca, 2015. "Female Labor Force Participation in Latin America: Patterns and Explanations," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0187, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    8. Uwe JIRJAHN & Stephen C. SMITH, 2018. "Nonunion Employee Representation: Theory And The German Experience With Mandated Works Councils," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(1), pages 201-233, March.
    9. Ufuk Akcigit & Sina T. Ates, 2023. "What Happened to US Business Dynamism?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(8), pages 2059-2124.
    10. Lütkenhorst, Wilfried, 2018. "Creating wealth without labour? Emerging contours of a new techno-economic landscape," IDOS Discussion Papers 11/2018, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    11. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    12. Alain Cohn & Tobias Gesche & Michel André Maréchal, 2022. "Honesty in the Digital Age," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 827-845, February.
    13. Dario Cords & Klaus Prettner, 2022. "Technological unemployment revisited: automation in a search and matching framework [The future of work: meeting the global challenges of demographic change and automation]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 115-135.
    14. Colombo, Emilio & Mercorio, Fabio & Mezzanzanica, Mario, 2019. "AI meets labor market: Exploring the link between automation and skills," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 27-37.
    15. Wang, Changming & Liao, Hongwei & Zhu, Lei & He, Leihua, 2024. "The haze reduction effect in china under the digital economy," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    16. Sonal Pandey, 2021. "Artificial Intelligence and Food Industry," RAIS Conference Proceedings 2021 0058, Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies.
    17. Mideros Andrés & O’Donoghue Cathal, 2015. "The Effect of Unconditional Cash Transfers on Adult Labour Supply: A Unitary Discrete Choice Model for the Case of Ecuador," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 225-255, December.
    18. Alejandro Micco, 2019. "The Impact of Automation in Developed Countries," Working Papers wp480, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    19. Goos, Maarten & Rademakers, Emilie & Röttger, Ronja, 2021. "Routine-Biased technical change: Individual-Level evidence from a plant closure," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(7).
    20. Ajay Agrawal & Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb, 2019. "Economic Policy for Artificial Intelligence," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 139-159.
    21. Pierre Barral & Mehdi Senouci, 2018. "Walking on two legs: Growth accounting with labor-saving and capital-saving technical change," Working Papers hal-01709599, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bistud:v:13:y:2018:i:2:p:12:n:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.