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To accelerate a green, just economic transition, a blueprint for action must start with people. To empower people, especially those who have been historically marginalized and harmed by climate change, the U.S. must adopt and deliver a national strategy around a human-centered green learning agenda (see Appendix 2). With a focus on climate education and workforce development, this national strategy can help feed into longer-term plans and programs throughout the country, and enable the U.S. to fulfill Article 12 under the Paris Agreement. This strategy would recognize state and local control over educational and training programs specific to individual regions, while giving the federal government a critical coordinating role in scaling action across multiple tiers of the U.S. education system, including formal education systems, higher education, career and technical education systems, teacher training institutions, and continuing education programs.2

To jumpstart action and set the country on this course, the Biden administration should focus on two key efforts. First, on the heels of rejoining the Paris Agreement, it should empower the USGCRP with a mandate and budget to serve the critical federal leadership role and interagency coordinating function of a nationwide new green learning agenda. Second, over the next year, the administration should create a USGCRP ACE Working Group that engages the ED and DOL to advance a 50-state strategy on the education and training of all learners—from school children to adults—for climate action. These two efforts together can lead to additional conversations and actions among federal agencies over the next four years and beyond, paving the way for state and local adoption.

The newly created SGCE should create an interagency ACE Working Group that includes senior career officials from the ED and DOL, with representation across genders and race and with programmatic and budgetary responsibility in this area. This working group should:

Name a U.S. ACE focal point in the next few months, who will also chair the ACE Working Group in the USGCRP.

We found that the net impact of PIPOL was equal to þ5.6 pp on average, but no impact was found for classroom training. The greatest impact was found for on-the-job training or internships (þ14.1 pp). The latter also affected the probability of finding permanent employment (þ3 pp). The mix of classroom training and internship had also a strongly positive effect (þ9.6), mainly due to the training needed to gain a qualification, which has a strong content of internship (þ6.4 pp). This was consistent with the view of a youth labor market where young people have excellent theoretical Pastore and Pompili 177 competences, but very little work experience and work-related competences, both general and job-specific (Pastore, 2015, 2017). The off-the-job training programs showed no statistically significant impact on employment. These results are partly due to a lock-in effect, namely the tendency of those who attend training programs to delay their job search activities. Interestingly, we found that the program had a different impact for different typologies of recipients and different types of intervention. The scheme seems to have a greater net impact in the case of women, foreigners, and lower educated young people. Some forms of off-the-job training nevertheless had a positive net impact on employment chances (training to gain a qualification). Internships in manufacturing and construction showed a greater impact than in the service sector. To sum up, our findings suggest that an active labor market policy is more effective in Italy when it generates work-related competences.

Organisational Citizenship Behaviours’ (OCBs) were defined by Organ (1997) as discretionary behaviours, not directly or explicitly recognised by the formal reward system and, taken together, promote the more effective functioning of the organisation. Depending on their nature, OCBs can be categorized in different dimensions (for a review refer to Podsakoff et al., 2000). Williams and Anderson (1991) provided a ‘target-based’ framework in which these voluntary behaviours were divided into OCBs that directly benefit the broader organisation (OCB-O), such as working extra-hours, and OCBs that directly benefit specific organisational members (OCB-I), such as helping a colleague in need. Building on previous literature on OCBs, Boiral (2009) defined OCBEs as, ‘individual and discretionary social behaviors not explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and contributing to improve the effectiveness of environmental management of organizations’ (p. 223). Subsequently, Lamm et al. (2013) stated that OCBEs are, ‘voluntary behaviors not specified in official job descriptions that, through the combined efforts of individual employees, help to make the organization and/or society more sustainable’ (p. 165). Moreover, Robertson and Barling (2017) proposed three categories of OCBEs: i) self-enacted OCBEs, which employees enact without any intentional influence on others; ii) co-worker focused OCBEs, which are directed at influencing and helping co-workers to be more environmentally friendly; and iii) organisationally focused OCBEs, which reflect behaviours aimed at influencing the organisation to improve its environmental performance. Overall, three main features are common to all available definitions: first, OCBEs benefit the environment; OCBEs are discretionary behaviours not recognised and rewarded by the formal organisational system; and third, cumulatively, they increase the effectiveness of the organisation in becoming ‘green’. Therefore, leveraging i) the ‘target-based’ framework by Williams and Anderson (1991) and ii) the OCBEs categories proposed by Robertson and Barling (2017), this study focused on two main types of OCBEs: Organisation-focused OCBE (OCBE-O) that includes employees' discretionary, environmentally related behaviours not recognised by the formal reward system that support the environmental management of the organisation. The OCBE-O documents employees' voluntary participation in environmentally related projects, courses, and related events implemented by the organisation; Co-worker focused OCBE (OCBE-I) that includes employees' discretionary environmentally related behaviours not recognised by the formal reward system that support and help colleagues in integrating environmental protection into the organisation. OCBE-I documents those actions stemming from personal exchanges among employees within the organisation. It includes mutual assistance regarding environmental issues, helping others in undertaking environmental protection behaviours, and sharing with colleagues new sustainability related values. Although the adoption of OCBEs cannot be mandated, managers can encourage the emergence of OCBEs by shaping a supportive context through appropriate interventions (Boiral, 2009). In this respect, ‘green’ training can help to create favourable conditions for the emergence of OCBEs. Based on their survey results on ‘green’ HRM and OCBEs, Dumont et al. (2017) suggested that organisations should consider providing employees with adequate ‘green’ training, since training serves multiple purposes. ‘Green’ training helps to equip employees with the necessary awareness, skills, and expertise for the successful implementation of green goals. It also increases their awareness and cognition of EM and organisational green values. Indeed, thanks to the diffusion of environmental awareness and competencies, employees become better able to take suitable actions to mitigate the environmental impacts in the workplace. They adopt new ‘green’ behaviours that are not necessarily mandated in job descriptions or recognised by the formal reward system. Moreover, given their multidimensional nature, these actions can be directed to more than one subject, either toward the organisation or colleagues. Therefore, the following hypothesis is developed: Hypothesis 1. ‘Green’ training has a positive effect on employees' a) Organisation-focused OCBE (OCBEeO) and b) Co-worker focused OCBE (OCBE-I).

This study has significant implications for sustainability managers willing to shape a ‘win-win’ organisational context for improving both environmental performance through employees' Table 9 Decomposition of ‘green’ training's effects on OCBO-E, OCBE-I and job satisfaction. DIRECT EFFECT MEDIATED EFFECT TOTAL EFFECT ‘GREEN’ TRAINING / OCBE-O 0.214 0.023 0.239 ‘GREEN’ TRAINING / OCBE-I 0.119 0.017 0.136 ‘GREEN’ TRAINING / JOB SATISFACTION 0.265 0.042 0.308 M. Pinzone et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 226 (2019) 221e232 229 OCBEs and social sustainability through employees' job satisfaction. These managers are, indeed, recommended to invest in ‘green’ training. In making this investment, they should underline challenging environmental goals and link them to individuals' ‘green’ behaviours. To this end, managers can leverage on new training methods and tools based on challenges, such as employee contests and serious games (e.g., Stanitsas et al., 2018). Managers should also make clear to employees the positive effect of this training on their satisfaction with their job. Sustainability managers should communicate their ‘green’ training activities, highlighting that this organisational effort is aimed at improving the environmental sustainability of the organisation and at supporting the work lives of employees. Sustainability managers are also recommended to design their ‘green’ training in such a way that provides employees with environmental competencies that they can apply at work but that also have a positive spill over into their private lives. For instance, waste management training sessions might include recycling practices that can be adopted at home as well. Similarly, training on energy efficiency can be linked to sustainable energy consumption behaviours in the employees' private domain. Finally, following our model, sustainability managers should assess progress achieved by means of ‘green’ training by monitoring not only the final expected outcomes (i.e., OCBEs and job satisfaction) but also the level of intermediate outcomes (i.e., ‘green’ goal difficulty and ‘green’ POS), for example, through continuous workplace surveys.

The green (or clean) economy—the sector of the economy that produces goods or services with an environmental benefit—offers a path to lower emissions, greater resilience, and millions of jobs. However, its realization is heavily constrained by a training gap—a lack of sustained educational and workforce development programming that can support a consistent pipeline of talent for green careers. Confusion over what types of occupations and industries are even in the green economy limits targeted investments and hampers our ability to move beyond ad hoc, short-term funding. In turn, current and prospective workers may lack access to the type of training needed—the apprenticeships and internships, for instance, that are vital in many related skilled trades careers. And these workers may fail to develop the wide range of specific, generic, and transformative capacities, or green skills, that are necessary for an unencumbered transition to a more equitable and inclusive economic system (see Appendix 1). For example, nearly half of career and technical education programs in the U.S. do not offer training and certification in related industries. The challenge is even more severe when considering all the workers retiring or leaving skilled trades careers; in several infrastructure-related occupations, up to a quarter of workers leave their positions on average each year, compared to about 10 percent for all workers nationally.

Closing the education, training, and emissions gaps will require closing a fourth gap—one of uneven access to quality and empowering learning opportunities. This inequality gap impacts underrepresented and underserved groups—especially girls and women, indigenous populations, and people of color—who, due to long-standing structures of discrimination and historic trends of disinvestment, have fewer opportunities to gain the skills, experiences, and networks to participate and lead in economic and political life and decisionmaking. These inequalities—which some would also argue are civil rights issues—should not be overlooked in future federal climate strategies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested that social justice and equity are core aspects of any strategy to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Without simultaneously reducing racial and gender inequality, eradicating poverty, and multisolving other development challenges—challenges from which the U.S. is not removed—the country’s best laid climate plans will go unrealized because those people crucial to the innovation, design, and implementation of climate-friendly policies and programs were left behind.

As the world transitions to a more sustainable future, there is a growing demand for skilled workers in emerging green industries.

However, the shift is also creating a skills gap in traditional industries, leading to labor shortages and challenges in meeting the demands of the green economy.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law last year, provides for an estimated $370 billion in solar, wind and electric vehicle subsidies, according to the White House. Starting Jan. 1, American consumers can take advantage of those tax credits to upgrade home heating systems or put solar panels on their roofs. Those investments will create nearly 537,000 jobs a year for a decade, according to an analysis by BW Research commissioned by The Nature Conservancy.

But with the U.S. unemployment rate at an historic low of 3.5%, companies say they fear they will struggle to fill those jobs, and that plans to transition away from fossil fuels could stall out. Despite layoff announcements and signs of a slowdown elsewhere in the economy, the labor market for clean energy jobs remains tight.

The U.S. is making some progress on this front. Approximately 875,000 Americans already hold jobs related to sustainability, renewable energy, and conservation. Over the next decade, the number of green jobs in the U.S. is expected to grow by another 114,000, or 9%. Specialized green jobs such as wind turbine service technicians and solar photovoltaic installers are projected to increase by more than 50%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And roles in climate protection—such as environmental engineering and conservation science—pay significantly higher salaries than the national median wage.

But the demand for green jobs is outpacing the production of green talent. Jobs that require green skills—building blocks such as waste prevention, environmental remediation, and other abilities that promote environmental sustainability of economic abilities—are crucial to this green transformation. A 2022 LinkedIn report found that job postings that require green skills have increased by 8% per year over the past five years, even as the pool of green talent grew by just 6% a year over that same period.

Adam D.K. King, UBI And Job Guarantees Aren’t The Leftist Solutions We Need, 2020, https://www.readthemaple.com/ubi-and-job-guarantees-arent-the-leftist-solutions-we-need/

The green jobs necessary for a just transition, however, will involve considerable skill and training. These need to be secure, adequately paid public sector jobs. A job guarantee, according to its principal policy architects, is also by definition a temporary employment program. JG jobs, as economics professor L. Randall Wray argues, would grow and contract according to the performance of the private sector labour market. A green transition needs good public sector employment, not temporary minimum wage workfare.

Adam D.K. King, UBI And Job Guarantees Aren’t The Leftist Solutions We Need, 2020, https://www.readthemaple.com/ubi-and-job-guarantees-arent-the-leftist-solutions-we-need/

What about the JG’s potential as a green jobs program? This is perhaps the most surprising claim of all. There’s no question that transitioning away from fossil fuels and averting the climate crisis will necessitate a massive expansion of public sector employment. But thinking this can be achieved through a minimum wage job guarantee program only confuses matters. Because the JG is fundamentally about guaranteeing employment, it must not include any skills requirements and must provide work to all those who apply.

One of the starkest trends in the changing landscape of work has been, and will be, automation through technological advancement. The threat of robots, algorithms, and artificial intelligence replacing workers has been studied extensively. In this paper, we exploit a representative sample of the prime aged US working population to look at how workers perceive the automation threat to their jobs and the impact of perceived automation risk on policy preferences, employment responses, populist attitudes, and voting intentions.

We document that self-reported fear of automation strongly correlates with requests for more redistribution and taxation, populist attitudes, and intentions to retrain or switch occupations. We then exploit a randomized information treatment to document the causal impact of perceived automation risk on these outcomes. We find that being exposed to higher job loss probabilities than perceived has a significant causal effect on a range of policy preferences and populist attitudes. In particular, workers exposed to higher job loss probabilities request higher levels of taxation, universal basic income, and income support for the poor. They are also more likely to consider themselves politically left leaning. In contrast, on average workers are not planning to respond to the automation threat by retraining or switching occupations. The only causal employment response is a much higher likelihood to intend to join a union.

Whether and how to target basic incomes will of course ultimately depend on specifics of context. That said, our reading of what we currently know – and crucially, what we do not – about targeting suggests that a few principles should typically hold. First, the benefits of targeting may be overestimated by analyses that do not take into account the incentives it generates or the realities of implementation on the ground. Universal or near-universal approaches deserve more consideration than they often receive. Second, the kinds of targeting that will make most sense will often be relatively simple, such as geographic targeting. Designers should guard against creating too much discretion for the front-line staff who implement targeting, including the implicit discretion that is created when a policy is too complicated for beneficiaries to understand it and hold local officials to account. However, these targets may perform extremely poorly in reaching the poor.

Suppose first that targeting would be implemented by a perfectly efficient and functional state, without any internal issues of performance, incentives, or administrative cost. This is clearly unrealistic for developing countries but helps segment the various issues around whether to target or not. Targeting the poorest has the obvious advantage of transferring resources to people for whom the marginal value of money is highest, since they have the least money. Yet things are less clear in a world of imperfect markets. As we described above, in worlds where markets are imperfect recipients of transfers may use them to relax binding constraints on growth, for example, by purchasing assets they otherwise could not have financed or starting businesses they did not have the capital for. In this case, the welfare impacts of the transfers depend on variation in the opportunities and constraints each person faces as well as variation in their baseline standard of living (and hence their marginal utilities). It could well be optimal to make transfers to someone a bit better off in a community if this will enable them to make a transformative investment in that community. Existing analysis of optimal targeting has largely ignored this issue, and so we know little about whether targeting the poor actually optimizes impact on poverty. If interactions between households are important, then optimal targeting becomes even more complicated. Transfers to people embedded in existing networks of mutual support may be redistributed within those networks and generate a final distribution different from the one on paper (e.g. Angelucci and De Giorgi (2009)). As we discussed above, many basic income advocates argue that the effect of entire communities being “in it together” will be greater than the sum of the effects on individuals treated in isolation. For example, targeting may create bitterness and social division that might reduce willingness to contribute to the financing of local public goods (Kidd and Wylde, 2011); universality could have the opposite effect.19 More generally, if own and neighbor’s treatment status are substitutes then this strengthens the case for targeting, while if they are complements it weakens the case. As of yet we know very little about these interactions. Targeting may also alter the political viability of basic income schemes – there is a large theoretical literature showing this, reviewing it is beyond the scope of this paper (see Cremer and Roeder (2015) and Casamatta et al. (2000) for two examples). A program’s beneficiaries typically form the core constituency willing to fight for its effective implementation of a program, or its continued existence. If only a small number of the poorest, most disadvantaged and disempowered members of a society benefit from a program, it may be hard for them to exert much influence over its future. This is one reason some in India, for example, have fought for the expansion of eligibility in means-tested programs such as the Public Distribution System, arguing that it would benefit the poorest to include somewhat better-off people who are influential enough to push back against the corrupt middle-men who looted the system in the past (e.g. Dre`eze and Khera (2010)). Consistent with this argument, Klasen and Lange (2016) show using data from the Chinese urban Dibao cash transfer program that a percent increase in the share of people who get benefits increases the budget available for the program by a third of a percent. Using fixed budget arguments for targeting may therefore underestimate the benefits of universality. Finally, targeting may create disincentive effects. As we discussed above, targeting a basic income relocates where the disincentive effects may fall (though of course, they may be of small magnitude). Any redistributive scheme can create disincentive effects for some part of the population, depending on who pays and who receives. For example, in a universal basic income scheme, disincentive effects would be concentrated among the people who are marginal contributors to the scheme, likely the upper and upper-middle classes. If instead the basic income transfers were targeted to the bottom quintile, say, this would lower taxes at the top but create a new disincentive effect to move out of the bottom quintile. Fundamentally, then the question of targeting is one about where in the distribution of incomes to locate the disincentive effects and the magnitude of any such disincentive effects. Unfortunately, we know very little about the incentive effects of targeting regimes in developing countries, in contrast to work on public finance in developed ones for which this has been a major focus. They certainly exist; Imbert and Papp (2018) find that the regional targeting of India’s employment guarantee to rural areas has discouraged rural-to-urban migration, for example (which may be good or bad, depending on whom you ask). Similarly, Banerjee et al. (2018) look at the impact of asset based poverty targeting of a program in Indonesia on the purchase of specific assets (TVs and SIM cards) and find a temporary increase in misreporting of these assets, but no reductions in sales of these assets, implying disincentive effects for may be small. More work in this area would be of great value.

Basic Income would put billions of dollars already in our economy to better and more productive use, rather than introduce new money into the market. It redirects money to help those in need and who will spend it on basic necessities, which stimulates our economy, creates jobs, and supports local businesses. As Basic Income advocate reverend Christ butler wrote in the Chicago tribune: “Contrary to what misinformed fearmongers might suggest, a basic income could ease inflation. Most economists agree that inflation is caused by introducing new money into the market, not by redistributing it… A basic income would not cause inflation; it would help families facing rising costs.” We’ve shown how to pay for basic income without taxing the vast majority of Canadians or printing new money: by funding it with contributions from our financial sector, fewer tax breaks for large companies, and fewer subsidies for the wealthiest. This is how we can build a ‘trickle-up’ economy that encourages economic growth while lifting millions of Canadians out of poverty. Existing Basic Income-like programs haven’t caused inflation. We already have a Basic Income in Canada that works and has not made life more costly for Canadians: the Canada Child Benefit (CCB), a Basic Income for families, contributes over $46 billion a year to our economy, creating more than 450,000 jobs, while lifting over 250,000 families out of poverty. For every $1 given to Canadian families, $2 is generated in economic activity. There’s no indication that the CCB has caused inflation. Instead, it has reduced the number of households facing severe food insecurity by 1/3 and has been hailed as "overwhelmingly" responsible for reduced poverty and income inequality in Canada. In the US, 132 economists signed an open letter in 2022 calling for the extension of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) – their version of the CCB – saying it would not “meaningfully increase inflation”, but would help families “keep up with the everyday costs of keeping a family afloat”. Basic Income expert Scott Santens noted that the CTC has functioned “as a protective shield against inflation.” Seniors benefits like Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement have been instrumental in drastically reducing poverty among our elderly (although there is still much work to be done to eliminate it entirely), with no evidence that this has caused inflation. Similarly, data shows that CERB and other emergency benefits contributed to the largest one-year reduction in poverty in nearly 50 years. In Alaska, where there is universal dividend for every resident, funded by their natural resources, it’s common for businesses to offer discounts when the cheques roll out to capture this extra spending capacity. That’s right – prices go down when the cheques go out. Interestingly, with the introduction of this dividend in 1982, Alaska went from having the highest rate of inflation in the US to the lowest. For Alaskans, unconditional cash meant less inflation, not more One more reason Basic Income won’t cause inflation: it doesn’t reduce competition between sellers of goods and services. Businesses would continue to compete for our money by offering high quality at reasonable prices – with or without Basic Income. In fact, Basic Income would actually increase competition in many sectors by fostering entrepreneurship. It would act as seed capital for countless entrepreneurs who would otherwise be stuck in dead-end jobs or unable to take the risk. Studies from around the world have shown that Basic Income increases people’s ability to start or expand a business, increases interest in starting a business, and boosts local business revenues.

A UBI system is still a theoretical approach, one that comes with good intentions and noble goals. Still, widespread financial equality and independence offer the potential to cause some serious economic issues. One major issue with a universal basic income, raised by those who oppose such a practice, is inflation. It’s easy to see how the institution of a UBI may fuel inflation. If every individual is granted an unconditional income from the government, then there is money to be spent. Providing massive amounts of money to virtually every individual in the country translates to a massively expanded money supply. It means that there is a higher demand for goods and services that manufacturers and retailers produce and sell. The law of supply and demand dictates that, as demand pressure increases on producers and retailers, they must increase prices on the available supply of goods and services to avoid being overwhelmed by the increased demand. That is inflation. If the end result of a UBI turns out to be uncontrolled inflation, then the cost of living continues to increase. It would necessitate an increase in the level of universal basic income provided to all citizens or allowing the standard of living for UBI recipients to decline, as they are able to purchase fewer goods and services with the amount of UBI they receive. Unless something can be done to manage the situation, there would just be a vicious circle created of higher UBI leading to increased prices, leading to a necessary increase in the UBI amount, leading to still higher prices… you get the idea

Perhaps the most overlooked engine fueling inflation is the “wealth effect,” the extra spending from Americans feeling flush as their stock portfolios and home prices jumped by trillions during a tag-team, Olympic sprint for both. By far the biggest share of the extra outlays on the likes of new cars, home improvements, and laptops comes from America’s top income tiers. Besides opening their wallets as their net worth swelled, those high-earners—who own the most expensive houses—tapped the fast-rising value of their manses as ATM-style fonts for cash. The sudden spike in their nest eggs and their cash-out refis keep the cohort spending at rates far faster than before the pandemic struck. And because that elite group accounts for such a huge share of overall consumption, it’s also a leading, and widely ignored, force in driving inflation that reached 7.5% in the January CPI reading, the highest level in four decades.

Put simply, the well-to-do, hugely compensated Americans contributing greatly to soaring prices is the class least damaged by the rampant inflation. So far, higher prices don’t seem to bother them and have done nothing to curb their record shopping spree. If deep-pocketed families feel the inflation pinch at some point, they harbor plenty of wiggle room to trim back by shortening vacations, ordering fewer features on a new Chevy Suburban, or dining out once instead of twice a week.

Americans continue to suffer from rampant price inflation. Since the spring of 2021, inflation has barreled along at a clip of roughly 8% per year as measured by the most accurate inflation index, the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. While the Federal Reserve Board has turned its attention to bringing down inflation with a series of interest rate hikes, elected officials are unfortunately treating inflation as a political problem to be spun rather than as a substantive challenge to be met. Federal lawmakers are making the Fed’s task more difficult by running pointlessly large federal deficits, policies that might be defensible in a deflationary environment but are inexcusable in an inflationary one. If lawmakers wish to help fight inflation, they should cut federal spending and reduce deficits. A good place to start would be by ratcheting back government benefits for the richest Americans.

Runaway price inflation often presents lawmakers with difficult policy challenges. On the one hand, the right policy response is to engage in less deficit spending, because such spending fuels consumption and puts upward pressure on prices. On the other hand, Americans who are suffering from price inflation can ill afford a simultaneous reduction in their government-provided benefits. One way to balance these conflicting considerations is by reducing federal payments to the well-off. Upper-income people spend proportionally less of their money on necessary expenses than other Americans. They are therefore proportionally less affected by inflation, and they can better afford to part with some federal largesse. Meanwhile, to the extent that less spending on upper-income people reduces deficits and inflationary pressures, it relieves Americans’ general economic hardship.

But while Universal Basic Income may seem a more attractive alternative to targeted transfers on paper, it may not always be so in reality, a new research paper by Rema Hanna of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Benjamin Olken of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests. Hanna and Olken use data from Peru and Indonesia to show that targeted schemes can meet welfare goals such as poverty reduction much more effectively compared with Universal Basic Income for a given programme cost.

As the Universal Basic Income programme would depend on contributions from a small tax-paying minority in a developing country, this may impose a very heavy tax burden on them. And the welfare gains may not be worth the cost. Since the poorest households (say at the 10th percentile) would receive the same transfer payment as the moderately better off households (say, those at the 75th percentile), the impact on poverty reduction is likely to be muted, Hanna and Olken argue. “Our evidence from Indonesia and Peru shows that existing targeting methods in developing countries, while imperfect, appear to deliver substantial improvements in welfare compared with universal programs, because they can transfer much more on a per-beneficiary basis to the poor as compared with universal programs," the authors write. “The primary downside of these programmes is horizontal equity—because targeting is imperfect, there will be a substantial number of poor households who slip through cracks and are excluded. Nevertheless, for many developing countries, our simulations suggest the welfare gains from targeting may be substantial."

The main drawback of a UBI is that it would be very expensive. One estimate from the Institute for Policy Research says that it would cost over £427bn a year to significantly reduce poverty in the UK: roughly double the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP) current budget. This would require a significant change to our political landscape, as well as eventual major tax increases. Much of this money would be going to individuals who are already well-off, which is a questionable use of government funds. This could however be mitigated via progressive taxation that both partially funds a UBI and indirectly reduces payments to the wealthiest.

When it comes to a minimum income guarantee (MIG), one advantage is that it can target support at the people who need it most. A MIG can also be adjusted to consider the different needs of different families, with higher MIGs for larger families and those with disabled members. Because of this targeting, the MIG approach generally provides a higher minimum income level for a much lower cost. But conversely, the big potential downside is that it could be complicated to administer.