On March 14, Ugo Gentilini from the World Bank responded to Gunnel Axelsson Nycander’s comment on the Bank’s new report on Universal Basic Income. Here is Gunnel’s reply.
Many thanks to Ugo Gentilini who paid attention to and commented on my blog. Both my comments and Gentilini’s response were written before the Covid 19 crisis had hit Europe and North America with full force. Now we can see that many countries have already implemented various kinds of broad/universal income support as a response to the economic crisis that the pandemic causes (including “helicopter money” in the US). Gentilini is keeping track of these initiatives in a commendable way. Probably and hopefully, a lot of research will be made about, and lessons drawn from these actions. Equally important is to study how resilient different systems of health care and social protection are to shocks like the Corona virus.
I maintain that a lot more analysis of the limits to, and risks associated with, targeting could have been included in the report. Interestingly, the issues around targeting and universality, including universal pensions and child benefits, were discussed at length at the book launch in Washington. Thanks for drawing my attention to the documentation of the seminar!
The fact that we draw different conclusions from the simulations in chapter 4 may partly have to do with the way we see some of the key concepts. As Gentilini points out, the authors regard age-based and poverty targeted programs as different kinds of targeting, whereas Act Church of Sweden sees universal pensions and child grants as expressions of universal protection.
As regards my statement that the authors do not see social protection as a right, I was merely quoting a sentence where you say that in a typical social protection, the provision of payment is a “discretionary benefit” rather than “a right”. I hope that it was an overinterpretation from my side to say that the authors don’t see social protection as a right.
I do understand that a two-page glimpse of history cannot be complete, but I am still concerned that the one theoretical framework you refer to speaks about phases rather than the (to my understanding) standard model of different models of welfare societies.
Thanks again for a book that has sparked good debates on these issues which the Covid 19 have made even more pertinent. Now I look forward to the forthcoming study from UNICEF and ODI on universal child benefits, which Alexandra Yuster announced at the book launch in February.
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