UBI trades-off with the early education and child care programs
Koslowski and Duvander ’18 (Allison, Professor of Social Policy and Research Methods @ the University of Edinburgh and Ann-Zofie, Professor of Demography @ Stockholm University, “Basic Income: The Potential for Gendered Empowerment?”, Social Inclusion (ISSN: 2183–2803) 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 8–15 DOI: 10.17645/si.v6i4.1487)
Many claims are made on what a basic income might achieve. Claims for a basic income include re- ducing poverty and benefit traps, cutting bureaucracy, matching security systems to better correspond with changes in working life, increasing wages, supporting cre- ativity and entrepreneurship, reducing unhealthy depen- dencies within relationships, increasing wellbeing, and the list continues (Kela, 2016). Some also claim that a basic income would reduce gender inequalities in soci- ety (McKay, 2001). However, the basic income move- ment makes no claims to be an explicitly feminist project (whilst acknowledging there are various feminisms).
In some ways, a basic income would be similar to existing ‘cash for care’ policies, which are not generally associated with increased gender equality (e.g. Mandel, 2009). In part, this is because such cash benefits reduce political pressure to provide comprehensive care, educa- tion and health services. Although advocates of a basic in- come are clear that a basic income only replaces benefits up to that amount, and in no way replaces existing ser- vices, it is quite common in parental leave policy debates, that cash benefits are explicitly used instead of provid- ing care services for very young children (e.g., Kurowska, 2019). The concern is that should such political trade-offs around resources occur, and should a basic income be seen as a replacement for early years education and care services as political compromise kicks in, this would have significant gendered implications.