Description:
The Women’s Budget Group and the Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis at the University of Essex are organising an event on Wednesday 28 April on Basic Income & UKMOD – Modelling Trade-Offs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred renewed interest in the possibilities of Universal Basic Income (UBI) to address the key problems of income insecurity, poverty and income inequality. UBI is claimed to provide income security and financial autonomy to individuals through a fixed, unconditional and individual regular stipend. By offering everyone a guaranteed income, a BI scheme would work to reduce poverty and income inequality.
Several Basic Income schemes have been modelled and analysed for the UK using different tax and benefit microsimulation programmes. In the opening panel session of the event, we are going to hear from researchers who have modelled different UBI schemes for the UK and the trade-offs they encountered.
Participants will then be invited to attend an advanced workshop on how to model UBI in UKMOD, the open-source tax-benefit microsimulation model for the UK developed and maintained by CeMPA and funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Prior attendance of a UKMOD training course is required to attend the training workshop. There is a maximum of 20 spaces, these will be provided on a first come, first served basis.
The programme for the event is below. You can register for the ‘Discussion Panel’ and ‘UKMOD training course’ here.
A morning panel will feature speakers who have simulated basic income schemes in the UK discussing the trade-offs that need to be considered when deciding on the policy parameters of a Basic Income scheme. The speakers will focus particularly on:
- Why a Basic Income for the UK;
- Different ways of introducing revenue-neutral schemes;
- The interaction of BI with the rest of the benefit system;
- Tax changes in the context of BI;
- Different ways of awarding of BI to children and pensioners
- Assessing the equality impacts of BI systems.
We will hear from researchers who have used different microsimulation programmes to model Basic Income.
Confirmed speakers:
- Matteo Richiardi – CeMPA (chair)
- Sara Reis – Women’s Budget Group
- Nick Pearce – IPR, University of Bath
- Malcolm Torry – Citizen’s Basic Income Trust & LSE
- Jamie Cook – RSA
- Howard Reed – Landman Economics
TRAINING WORKSHOP – Using UKMOD to simulate Basic Income (now full)
The second part of the day will consist of a 3-hour training workshop which will showcase how to approach some of these trade-offs using UKMOD to simulate a Basic Income scheme.
Session 1: Fiscal neutrality – introducing loops to achieve cost-neutrality when designing Basic Income schemes
Session 2: Interaction with the tax and benefit system – making decisions around means-tested benefits and (income) tax reform in BI schemes
Session 3: Children and pensioners – the treatment of specific groups within a Basic Income system.
Session 4: Distributional & equality impacts – how to analyse them in UKMOD
TIMETABLE
10:00-11:30 – Morning Panel: Modelling Basic Income
12:00-12:45 – Training workshop 1: Fiscal neutrality
12:45-13:30 – Training workshop 2: Interaction with the benefit system
14:30-15:10 – Training workshop 3: Children and pensions
15:10-16:30 – Training workshop 4: Distributional & equality impacts (+ time for questions)