Basic Income and Social Sustainability in Post-Growth Economies

Malmaeus Mikael (), Alfredsson Eva and Birnbaum Simon
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Malmaeus Mikael: IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Alfredsson Eva: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Birnbaum Simon: Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden

Basic Income Studies, 2020, vol. 15, issue 1, 27

Abstract: A central task in efforts to identify pathways to ecologically and socially sustainable economies is to reduce inequality and poverty while reducing material consumption, which has recently inspired future post-growth scenarios. We build a model to explore the potential of a universal basic income (UBI) to serve these objectives. Starting from the observation that post-growth trajectories can take very different forms we analyze UBI in two scenarios advanced in the literature. Comparing UBI in a “local self-sufficiency” economy to a UBI in an “automation” economy, we show that although both scenarios satisfy central sustainability criteria, the impact of a UBI would differ greatly between these contexts. Our analysis shows that a UBI is less compatible with a labor-intensive local self-sufficiency economy than a capital-intensive, high tech economy. We conclude that the feasibility and attractiveness of a UBI in a post-growth scenario depends greatly on the specific characteristics of the economy.

Keywords: planetary boundaries; sustainability; basic income; scenarios; relative prices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1515/bis-2019-0029

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