Impact of Universal Basic Income on Income and Poverty in Italy: A Multi-Scenario Analysis Using HFCS Data in EUROMOD
| Název práce v češtině: | Dopad nepodmíněného základního příjmu na Itálii: Analýza za použití HFCS dat v EUROMOD. |
|---|---|
| Název v anglickém jazyce: | Impact of Universal Basic Income on Income and Poverty in Italy: A Multi-Scenario Analysis Using HFCS Data in EUROMOD |
| Klíčová slova: | univerzální základní příjem, chudoba, příjmová nerovnost, spravedlnost, příjem domácností, sociální dávky, ekonomika práce, hospodářská politika, progresivní daň z příjmu, daňová optimalizace, blahobyt, důchody |
| Klíčová slova anglicky: | universal basic income, poverty, income inequality, equity, household income, social benefits, labour economics, economic policy, progressive income tax, tax optimisation, well-being, pensions |
| Akademický rok vypsání: | 2022/2023 |
| Typ práce: | bakalářská práce |
| Jazyk práce: | angličtina |
| Ústav: | Institut ekonomických studií (23-IES) |
| Vedoucí / školitel: | Bc. Daniel Kolář, M.Sc. |
| Řešitel: | skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem |
| Datum přihlášení: | 22.06.2023 |
| Datum zadání: | 22.06.2023 |
| Datum a čas obhajoby: | 24.01.2024 09:00 |
| Místo konání obhajoby: | O105, místnost č. 105 |
| Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: | 03.01.2024 |
| Datum proběhlé obhajoby: | 24.01.2024 |
| Oponenti: | PhDr. Lenka Šťastná, Ph.D. |
| Zásady pro vypracování |
| Theses are to be written in English and LaTeX. |
| Seznam odborné literatury |
| Blattman, Christopher, and Paul Niehaus. “Show Them the Money: Why Giving Cash Helps Alleviate Poverty.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 93, no. 3, 2014, pp. 117–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24483411. Accessed 4 June 2023.
Bobkov, V. N., I. B. Kolmakov, and E. V. Odintsova. Modeling the Effect of Paying Basic Income to Unemployed Citizens of the Russian Federation, vol. 224, 2020., doi:10.1051/e3sconf/202022403004. Dušek L., Kalíšková K., Munich D.. „Model TAXBEN pro hodnocení dopadů daňových změn“, Národohospodářský ústav AVČR, v.v.i., 2013 Forget, Evelyn L. “The Town with No Poverty: The Health Effects of a Canadian Guaranteed Annual Income Field Experiment.” Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, vol. 37, no. 3, 2011, pp. 283–305. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050182. Accessed 4 June 2023. Haushofer J, Shapiro J. “Policy Brief: Impacts of Unconditional Cash Transfers“, 2013 Hoynes, Hilary, and Jesse Rothstein. “Universal Basic Income in the United States and Advanced Countries.” Annual Review of Economics, vol. 11, no. 1, 2 Aug. 2019, pp. 929–958, gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/Hoynes-Rothstein-UBI-081518.pdf, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080218-030237. Krug, Gerhard, et al. “The Social Stigma of Unemployment: Consequences of Stigma Consciousness on Job Search Attitudes, Behaviour and Success.” Journal for Labour Market Research, vol. 53, no. 1, 12 July 2019, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-019-0261-4. López, J. A., R. G. -. Díaz, and D. P. Rodríguez. "Financial Evaluation of a Universal Basic Income in Andalusia." Revista De Estudios Regionales, no. 120, 2021, pp. 129-164. Mencinger, Jože. “The Revenue Side of a Universal Basic Income in the EU and Euro Area.” DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, vol. 6, no. 3, 1 Sept. 2015, pp. 159–174, https://doi.org/10.1515/danb-2015-0010. Accessed 4 June 2023. Tenhunen, M. -. "Why Finland is the Happiest Country in the World?" Cogito, vol. 12, no. 3, 2020, pp. 18-28. |
| Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce |
| The economic problem discusses how to allocate scarce resources and although money (fiat currencies) is not a productive resource, it is being redistributed by governments and corresponding tax systems. How should the government decide how to redistribute its tax revenue most efficiently and equitably (perhaps even equally)? This can be partially answered if we are able to identify the goals of such a government. Such goals should tackle current major (subjective) societal issues: (1) income inequality, (2) poverty, (3) overall well-being (including the uncertainty of job loss via automation) and (4) low birth rate. (1), (2) and (4) are relatively easily measured, however, (3) is not, yet a continuously improving well-being should arguably be the goal of society, otherwise, what is the reason for human life?
This work should not be philosophical – it is advocating a policy of UBI for a specific economy, Czechia. I have been convinced by research conducted in Canada (Forget, 2011), Namibia, Finland, and Western Kenya (Haushofer, 2013) that UBI is a powerful tool in improving poverty rates. Meanwhile the proportion of people on the brink of poverty in Czechia increased to 16 %. Moreover, the total global inequality has doubled in the last 200 years. The ‘top 1 %’ owns more than is acceptable while people (even in the developed country of Czech Republic) struggle to provide food and housing. An efficient and surprisingly low-cost improvement to this problem could be UBI and I find it very important to prove that an implementation of it into the Czech national budget is not only feasible but even advantageous. (Blattman, 2014) UBI unfortunately attracts criticism from the general public as well as from economic experts. Some of the common criticism is the fear of loss of motivation to work, unsustainable financing, reduction to targeted support and the creation of dependency on UBI. Although I will conduct a literature review and reflect on these criticism points, the main agenda will be to debunk the fear of unsustainable financing using the case study of virtually integrating UBI into the Czech national budget. Contribution In this century alone, roughly 9 countries launched a pilot program to test UBI on a smaller scale. This naturally does not provide enough evidence to convince all politicians to pursue this country-wide, however, a discussion around UBI should be held in the Czech parliament and a research group should be set up to formally test its implications. At the moment of writing, no Czech political party has UBI in their mission statement, not even the ‘Pirates’ who have mentioned UBI several years ago and have dropped it since. Therefore, in practice, my results could be a starting point to a formal (realistically, only to an informal) discussion about UBI. Relative to the existing literature, I would like to indirectly develop on the following research: (1) UBI applied to Andalusia – its authors applied two UBI scenarios to a comparable population of roughly 8 million people with a similar economic status to Czechia, however, the format of UBI is far from my proposal (López, 2021); (2) UBI applied to the European Union (EU), where its author again hypothesised on different scenarios of redistributing income, however, EU is much more complex than Czechia, making it currently unrealistic (Mencinger, 2015); (3) a paper discussing the role of UBI in the United States and other advanced countries – most of the recognised research on UBI is conducted on developing countries, therefore this paper opens a formal discussion about the feasibility of UBI in countries such as Czechia. (Hoynes, 2019) Most of the literature on UBI concludes the lack of experimental evidence of UBI success on a larger scale. Such an experiment is challenging to conduct, therefore, my work should only, as mentioned, reflect on the financial feasibility of UBI in Czechia. Methodology The primary data source will be the EU-SILC data (European Union – Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) collected by the Czech Statistical Office. These data are traditionally used to measure relative poverty or estimate economic activity within households. They are also vital in social policymaking. I am going to analyse the SILC data using a model TAXBEN. This model allows to quantify the impact of tax policies on households. This model is specific to Czechia as tax policies and key assumptions differ from country to country (i.e. USA has TAXSIM). The software running this model is based in Stata. (Dušek, 2013) Using this model, I will attempt to estimate progressive income tax rates that could accommodate the financial burden of UBI. Other challenges that will be tackled by TAXBEN are: replacing other social benefits, estimating BUI size and who should receive UBI? The secondary data source will come from the Ministry of Finance to break down the national budget. This will aid in finding revenue and expenditures that are aligned with UBI. Outline 1. Abstract 2. Introduction a. Identification of the economic problem – reason for this work b. General idea of UBI – history, potential benefits & drawbacks c. UBI in Czechia – history d. Overview of the paper & its objective 3. Literature review a. Conducted pilot experiments (Canada, Finland, Namibia, Kenya, etc.) b. Current arguments and relevant research c. Existing gaps in UBI research 4. Methodology a. Overview of TAXBEN b. Application of TAXBEN 5. Policy proposal a. Overview of the Czech national budget b. Implementation of UBI and new income tax rates c. Benefit for Czechia 6. Impact evaluation a. Potential impact of UBI using TAXBEN b. Expected benefits and challenges 7. Discussion a. Reflection on results b. How will this research affect the UBI debate? c. Limitations and areas for further research 8. Conclusion |