UBI structurally disadvantages women

An International Journal of Basic Income Research, Vol. 3, Issue 3, December 2008)

An important difference between BIG and a welfare state is that in a BIG regime benefits are spread evenly over the population, while in the latter most benefits are targeted toward those with special needs that are expensive to fill – those who have children requiring constant care, those whose income is insufficient for decent housing, those whose children could profit from an expensive college education, and so on. Obviously, a high proportion of those having such needs are women, lone mothers in particular. Benefits targeted toward those with particular needs can be universal in the sense of being open to all who have such needs regardless of income, marital status, or gender. But targeting allows awarding very expensive benefits to only part of the population -- those in particular need of them -- without requiring that huge sums be expended to deliver to everybody benefits of equal value. A second difference is that BIG gives cash, while a welfare state gives a significant proportion of benefits in the form of goods and services, or vouchers that can only be spent on these. This insures that public money goes to fill publicly agreed-upon needs and that taxpayers’ money is not spent on things of lower public priority or that are wasteful, such as gambling or larger cars. Another feature of in-kind benefits is that they deter labor force participation less than cash benefits do. On the contrary, some in-kind benefits, such as child care, encourage it. The targeting and non-cash features of a welfare state reduce opposition to the state provision of benefits. When expensive benefits in the form of goods and services are given to those who obviously need them, the fact that they are not given to those who do not need them is not a cause for resentment, or at any rate less of a cause for resentment than the distribution of hugely unequal cash benefits would be. The superiority of a welfare state over BIG for the support of lone mothers is obvious. If they hold jobs, and relatives are unavailable to care for their children, the cost of decent-quality child care may amount to half their earnings or more. A BIG might pay in whole or part for child care, but using it in this way puts lone mothers at a disadvantage compared to those who can use the BIG grant to raise their standard of living – better food, clothing, housing. A welfare state, by contrast, recognizes the particularly acute needs of lone mothers and addresses them, and creates an equalizing effect not provided by BIG. The vast majority of lone-mother families cannot have a mainstream standard of living without earning a salary plus receiving government help with health insurance, high quality child care, higher-education expenses, andhousing. In the absence of such provision, even a BIG of $10,000–20,000 going to such a family would not suffice to put it on a par with other families, because the lone-mother family would have to spend the BIG on child care or forego paid work. It is increasingly important that government programs be structured to address the needs of lone mothers and their children. Lone mothers are not some minor part of the population. The proportion of the population living with a spouse dramatically declines year by year, as marriages are delayed to later ages and the high divorce rate persists. At the same time, the proportion of children born to unmarried women increases. The households of unmarried cohabitants, into which an increasing proportion of children are being born, are even less stable than the households of married people. Lone mothers are chronically short of time, and the majority have low earnings. In 2006 in the United States, the median two-earner family had income of $76,000, the one-earner couple had $54,000, while the lone mother had $29,000. Clearly, the lone-mother family is very far down on the totem pole. Part of the public resents births to lone mothers as imposing taxpayer costs that births to married couples avoid. Such resentments are minimized when lone mothers are earners (i.e., they are not “lazy”), and the in-kind benefits they get are also available to other parents.