Public values, Universal Basic Income and health: developing a mixed-methods study to elicit and deliberate public values for Universal Basic Income and comparator policies in relation to their impact on population health and health inequalities

Autor: McGowan, Victoria, Baker, Rachel, Donaldson, Cam, Lightbody, Ruth, McHugh, Neil, Bambra, Clare, Watson, Verity
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
DOI: 10.17605/osf.io/yjk54
Popis: Universal Basic Income (UBI) is proposed as a means of redistributing resources to reduce the UK’s health divide. While vital modelling work suggests UBI can positively act on population health and health inequalities, a rigorous, mixed-method study of public values is needed. This would assess a) whether the costs of UBI are justifiable in terms of the value placed on improving population health (outcomes) and on reducing health inequalities (distribution) in the context of comparator income-based policies (e.g. a Minimum Income Guarantee, increasing Universal Credit, Real Living Wage, targeted basic income), and b) whether policies are supported in ideological terms. Although systematic review evidence suggests the UK public are averse to inequalities in health between socioeconomic groups, the scenarios assessed are abstracted from real policy proposals. Evidence is lacking on the trade-offs the public are willing to make with respect to differing magnitudes (and distributions) of costs and benefits across a range of income-based policies. Research combining quantitative data from stated preference methods with qualitative data from deliberative methods is needed to assess whether different income-based policies are worth their costs to society as well as the social legitimacy of different policy instruments. Different models of UBI and comparator policies will result in different distributions of health and costs that citizens may value more or less. Stated preference methods, importantly, present respondents with trade-offs, permit the elicitation of monetary values, provide insight on the direction and intensity of public support and can inform a full cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Policies can operate in different ways, however. For example: targeting the worst-off versus universal payments, or unconditional versus conditional payments, and public support for various policy attributes is likely to rest on fundamental ideological stances. So, in addition to measuring public values through stated preference methods, facilitated public deliberation between citizens with different views is needed to engage in reasoning and reach policy recommendations. Working at the intersection of public health, (health) economics, political science, and social policy this research will undertake the developmental work necessary to inform a large-scale study on public values for UBI and competing policy options. Stated preference and deliberative methods both require policy scenarios of the good being valued and deliberated. This entails describing different UBI models and comparator policies in terms of outcomes (e.g., population health, health inequality and income) and attributes (e.g., conditionality, targeting, cost). Use of stated preference methods in this area presents methodological complexities (e.g., identifying winners and losers, self- versus other-regarding preferences, use of a money-metric). Development work is needed to: identify the range of relevant policy options and cover the range of policy attributes; set out a valuation framework to guide the design of stated preference survey methods and analysis; design and pilot-test stated preference methods.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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