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

Gilbert Richard (), Murphy Nora A., Stepka Allison, Barrett Mark and Worku Dianne
Additional contact information
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

Basic Income Studies, 2018, vol. 13, issue 2, 12

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.

Keywords: basic income; basic income guarantee; labor outcomes; evaluation studies; pilot programs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bis-2018-0011 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bistud:v:13:y:2018:i:2:p:12:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bis/html

DOI: 10.1515/bis-2018-0011

Access Statistics for this article

Basic Income Studies is currently edited by Anne-Louise Haagh and Michael W. Howard

More articles in Basic Income Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().