New questions, new data, old interventions: The health effects of a guaranteed annual income
Preventive Medicine, Dec 1, 2013
This study investigates whether administration data from universal health insurance can yield new... more This study investigates whether administration data from universal health insurance can yield new insight from an old intervention. Specifically, did a guaranteed annual income experiment from the 1970s, designed to investigate labor market outcomes, reduce hospitalization rates? The study re-examined the saturation site of a guaranteed annual income experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba (CANADA) conducted between 1974 and 1979 (MINCOME). We used health administration data generated by the universal government health insurance plan to identify subjects (approximately 12,500 residents of Dauphin and its rural municipality). We used propensity-score matching to select 3 controls for each subject from this database, matched on geography of residence, age, sex, family size and type. Outcome measures were hospital separations and physician claims. Hospital separations declined 8.5% among subjects relative to controls during the experimental period. Accident and injury codes and mental health codes were most responsible for the decline. Even though MINCOME was designed to measure the impact of a GAI on the number of hours worked, one can re-visit old experiments with new data to determine the health impact of population interventions designed for other purposes. We determined that hospitalization rates declined significantly after the introduction of a guaranteed income.
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Papers by Evelyn Forget
In its 2016 Budget, the government of Ontario committed to designing a basic income pilot project. The idea of basic income is not new, but in the face of a radically different labour market and new technological disruption the concept is once again on the radar of governments around the world. Our latest paper takes a look at the research from a series of basic income experiments conducted in the U.S. and Canada in the 1960s and ‘70s. It discusses the lessons learned from these projects as well as several more recent experiments in low and medium income countries.
Taking into account recent changes to the structure of the labour market and the impending effects of technology and automation on jobs, Pilot Lessons explores how a basic income could impact entrepreneurship, innovation and society’s relationship to work. Combining these analyses of past experiments and the current context, the report makes recommendations on how Ontario could best design a basic income pilot project.