With thanks to the BBC, I have permission to post a copy of my interview about universal benefits, broadcast on 29th September. It is obtainable as an MP3 file here.
Social policy: commentary and updates
Paul Spicker
With thanks to the BBC, I have permission to post a copy of my interview about universal benefits, broadcast on 29th September. It is obtainable as an MP3 file here.
Thank you very much, Paul. An excellent interview – I shall circulate it.
Related to this, I have been trying to find out if anyone has done work comparing the automatic stabilising effect of benefits now with some years ago. I’ve found work that compares the effect across countries but not across time. Insurance benefits help to benefit all by keeping demand higher than if they did not exist. Given the cuts to contrib UI/JSA over time, barely one-tenth of the unemployed get it compared with well over two-thirds many years ago – and the value has fallen from one-fifth to one-tenth of average wage. Do you know of any work that tackles this in a more detailed way over time?
Best wishes, yours, Adrian
There’s a review of the literature on countercyclical spending in N Prasad, M Gerecke, Social security spending in times of crisis, Global Social Policy 2010 10(2), section 6. The literature is thin, though; many economic analyses tend to consider the economic impacts only to the extent that unemployment benefits are supposed to slow down job search.