The researchers based at the University of Glasgow and the University of Essex used Understanding Society data to discover how a UBI might influence mental health for working-age adults in the United Kingdom.
Why was this study done?
- Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a radical social security policy proposal where everyone in a society would receive a regular, unconditional cash payment.
- It has been suggested that UBI might be beneficial for mental health.
- However, there has never been a trial of a true UBI in a high-income country to know what its potential mental health impacts might be.
What did the researchers find?
- If people choose to stay in work, UBI may have small benefits for population mental health, but if people are more likely to leave work, population mental health may worsen.
- The groups most likely to experience positive mental health effects of UBI were women and those with the lowest educational qualifications.
What does this mean for the future?
- More real-world research is needed to know how people are likely to respond to receiving a UBI in reality.
- The main limitation of the study is that it looks at how UBI would influence mental health only through income and employment, and other pathways might also be important to include in future research.
The authors of the report said, “…while it comes with considerable financial cost, our exploratory modelling analyses suggest a liveable UBI may reduce the number of UK working-age adults diagnosed with a common mental health problem by around 112,000 cases on introduction, if recipients choose to remain in work.
“However, in the worst-case scenario for employment effects, our simulations suggest the same policy could instead lead to an increase of 157,951 cases. Our work highlights how modelling approaches can be a useful complementary method where trials can only be small scale, or where interventions are likely to exert complex effects on wider systems.”
Using UKMOD for microsimulation
This research uses UKMOD – the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the UK. The open-source tool allows analysts to study the effects of tax changes and social benefits on individuals and households.
You can find out more about UKMOD on the project website. Read the full report: Short-term impacts of Universal Basic Income on population mental health inequalities in the UK: A microsimulation modelling study | PLOS Medicine
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