What should be delivered by the state to its citizens and how? Policymakers have grappled with this question for centuries, including right now in the UK. The British government undoubtedly needs to reform the welfare system – far too many people are struggling under the status quo. An array of services, including healthcare, schools, transportation, food and housing, are all on the table. As is cash, often in the form of unconditional transfers or means-tested benefits. The challenge is working out what the best mix of these is.
The movements for both universal basic income (UBI) and universal basic services (UBS) push the idea that the complicated decisions about what the state should offer could be greatly simplified if we worried less about who benefits. Both emphasise universality, arguing that support for everyone, regardless of their means, is more just, more efficient and more effective than our current, highly conditional, and somewhat austere system of support.
But based on current evidence, it seems unlikely that UBI or UBS would bring about the benefits some proponents like to claim.
As an evaluation researcher in children’s social care, my work focusses on a subset of society: children and families who experience the state at its most interventionist. These families, who become known to social work services due to concerns about abuse or neglect, are at the sharp end of poverty and inequality.
Such intervention is often welcomed by families, but it is also often imposed on them. Cash and services from the state form the array of interventions these families receive, making them a key microcosm of the broader debate about the policy mix of the two. And the stakes could hardly be higher: children may be taken away from birth parents if the things social workers are concerned about are not addressed.
While most of what they receive is targeted, the growing body of evidence rarely shows as much of a difference at the aggregate level as we would hope. As an evaluator interested in broader social issues, I am interested in exploring how this evidence can inform wider policy lessons.
Much of the debate so far has relied on philosophical arguments for universality, or claiming one mode of intervention to be better than the other. My argument here is more pragmatic. Based on insights from children’s social care, a more productive approach is to try and reach an optimal mix of policy types (cash and services), and modes (universality and targeting).
The sharp end of social policy
In a field where poverty has been described as the “wallpaper” of practice – “too big to tackle, too familiar to notice” – it may come as a surprise that despite the recent trials, cash-based interventions are rarely used as ways to keep children safely at home.
One of the few examples where substantial financial help was given comes from a small feasibility study where social workers had control of cash budgets of up to £10k to spend with families. The findings were encouraging, but the use of material help went against the grain in a sector that defaults to specialist or professional input, even though that continued to be offered alongside.
At the point where families become known to statutory services, their problems are typically serious enough that cash alone will not solve them. They may need treatment for mental health problems, substance misuse, or help to tackle domestic abuse. Poverty surely exacerbates such issues. But if cash alone was going to help, it needed to arrive much earlier – before the problems became entrenched.
The same argument – that help is more effective when it arrives further upstream – can be applied to services. When we study the impact of targeted interventions for families already in crisis, we find quite modest benefits or often no benefit at all. This may be in part because poverty continues to pile pressure on people in the background, frustrating efforts to improve their situation in myriad ways.
This isn’t to say that cash-based or service-based help isn’t useful. It certainly can be, and clearly the utility of either usually increases when combined with other forms of support. But it’s the synergy between different interventions and the point of intervention that is crucial. We should be wary of anyone claiming that a certain type or mode of support is going to ‘fix’ anything quickly. Entrenched problems do not easily disappear.
Universality vs. targeting
But what would ameliorate social problems more quickly and more cheaply? Should the same support be offered to everybody regardless of their circumstances (i.e. the National Health Service), or targeted to groups with certain characteristics (i.e. universal credit) or needs (i.e. children with a social worker)? And how should cash and services be targeted, if they are to be targeted at all?
Once again, this decision needs to explore what the evidence says.
Those in favour of universality argue that it comes with certain instrumental benefits. Removing targeting is thought to streamline the system and reduce bureaucratic load (and cost). They also say it could reduce the stigma associated with receiving welfare. But advocates generally put their strongest arguments on a philosophical footing. Basic income or basic services they say, is (or should be) a right for all.
This argument sidesteps two important questions. What makes life better for most people most of the time, without seriously disadvantaging a minority? And, in the light of this, what is the most cost-effective policy? To date, the relative paucity of high-quality impact evaluations of such schemes in the Global North has allowed these moral theoretical claims to dominate the narrative and foster a dogmatic approach.
But these are, of course, evaluation questions. Pilots and experiments globally are beginning to demonstrate benefits of principles like universality and unconditionality. However the nuanced findings that have emerged from the largest studies to date only confirm that there are no clear-cut answers.
There are interesting findings, but little about them points to universality being the better mode of delivery
The results of a trial recently carried out in Finland are largely favourable to basic income, but mixed enough that both critics and advocates have interpreted them as supporting their positions. Another recently published study offers more grist to both mills, but this time the results are more disappointing for proponents of UBI.
Funded by OpenResearch and arguably the most rigorous yet, it found that a monthly cash transfer of $1000 for two years had only mixed and fairly modest effects. For instance, researchers found only a small (2 percentage point) decrease in rates of employment and hours worked (1.3-1.4 hours per week, by recipients and their partners), and a concomitant fall in employment income. There was also some evidence that the basic income allowed some recipients to be more discerning about their work and take on higher quality jobs.
There were some large but short-lived benefits for mental health that disappeared after the first year. No significant effects on physical health materialised. However, significant increases in plans to pursue further education, particularly among participants with the lowest household incomes at the start, are encouraging. Perhaps for similar reasons, the results also showed an uptick in aspirations to take an entrepreneurial path in the future.
These are interesting findings, but little about them points to universality being the better mode of delivery. Just that people generally benefit from having more money, which will be a surprise to no one.
If the evidence on effects is mixed, what about our second question of cost effectiveness? Unfortunately there is very little evidence demonstrating large savings either, which is a problem for advocates of UBI and UBS. It leaves the policy wide open to critics who argue it is too expensive to do at scale.
In theory, the large budgets required to scale UBI and UBS projects could be offset by reduced use of expensive public services (such as prisons and hospitals). But for it to be worth changing the system, the effects would need to be different and much larger than those reported by OpenResearch.
Without more research on both the effects and the costs of UBI and UBS, we cannot make evidence-informed choices about which state provisions should be universal and which should be targeted. My guess is that some combination of the two approaches will prove optimal. In Wales, where I live, there are some positive moves in that direction.
Progressive universalism
Under the auspices of ‘progressive universalism’, the Welsh government is gathering evidence about what the optimal mix of targeted and universal provision might be. Progressive universalism aims to provide universal benefits or services to everyone, with additional support or resources for those who need it most.
For example, the basic income pilot for care leavers in Wales (which I am involved in evaluating) combines a monthly income of £1,600 (before tax) for two years. This is bundled with access to financial advice from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, on top of the usual services care leavers can access, such as a ‘personal advisor’ employed by their local authority. It is open to all eligible care leavers in the country who turned 18 within a 12-month window.
Our evaluation, findings from which will come out over the next few years, will detail the impact of this pilot on a range of outcomes. It will also give us more data on how people experience the pilot, how it was implemented, and – importantly – how cost effective it is.
Another example is the roll out of free school meals to all primary school children (aged 5-11) in Wales. Free school meals are targeted elsewhere in the UK. This started in September 2022 and will have reached universal coverage by the end of this year. Evaluation of this programme should tell us, among other things, how the benefits vary for children with different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Such studies promise to bring us incrementally closer to knowing what is optimal. We must continue to test and learn so that the next iteration of policies is based on evidence, not optimism.
Building a careful case for change
Following the election this summer, the UK now has what appears to be the most interventionist government it has had for decades, with prominent plans for nationalisation and regulation. But it faces the significant challenge of public finances being in a parlous state, after the Covid-19 pandemic and years of chaos and incompetence from the previous administration.
In this context, pursuing the optimal mix of different types of state support will be vital to achieve the government’s goal of raising living standards. This involves the complex questions of what to deliver, in what combination and through what modalities. To answer these, there is a growing need for policy to draw on more sophisticated evaluation, and more evidence-led decision making, than they have in the past. Centrists are, almost by definition, not known for favouring radical policies. But they are more likely than those further towards the margins to take note of what the evidence says.
This is the very opposite of dogma: careful, incremental, pragmatic, and data-driven progress. It may be the beginnings of the centrist case for overhauling welfare, in an image that draws upon the theory and logic of UBI and UBS, and in a form that actually helps people.
Explore the rest of the series
This series looks at the specific challenges that campaigners face when arguing for universal basic income in highly individualised and neoliberal contexts like the United States and the United Kingdom, and how they work to overcome them.
Part 1 | Getting on with it
- UBI in the US ‘not just an idea’ – it’s achievable
Shafeka Hasash, Economic Security Project - 'Hope goes a long way': BI as a lifeline for ex-prisoners
Kevin Scott, Community Spring - Could a guaranteed income pave the way for racial justice?
Rachel Pyon, Deon Hodrick and Matthew Harvey, Equity and Transformation - Direct cash transfers 'could halve child poverty' in Oregon
Antonio Gisbert, Oregon Rebate - What can end the suffering of Black mothers and children in the US?
Zea Malawa, University of California, Berkeley Public Health
Part 2 | Widening the politically possible
- UBI could mean justice for everyone. How do we get there?
Philippe Van Parijs, UCLouvain - Basic income ‘won’t stop people working’: lessons from Canada
Ben Earle and Sheila Regehr, Basic Income Canada Network - Basic income could put food banks out of business
David Beck, University of Salford and UBILab Food - Basic income: why we need to start talking about money
Cleo Goodman, Autonomy and the Basic Income Conversation - Can cities do what national governments won’t on basic income?
Leandro Ferreira, Brazilian Basic Income Network
Part 3 | Getting the policy mix right
- It's time for a welfare revolution in the UK
Vibhor Mathur, University of Bath - Put the whole government to work rebuilding Britain
Matthew Johnson, Elliot Johnson and Kate Pickett, Northumbria University and University of York - Does Labour dare to renew the welfare state?
Cleo Goodman, Autonomy - Will Scotland be the first to guarantee a minimum income?
Ruth Boyle and David Eyre, Poverty Alliance - Sustainable welfare for a sustainable planet
Nicholas Langridge and Milena Büchs, University of Bath and University of Leeds - From dogma to data: a centrist case for pragmatic welfare reform
David Westlake, Cardiff University
