Date: 8 March 2017
Time: 10:00-12:00
Olli Kangas, Professor, Director of Governmental Relations, Social Insurance Institution, Kela, Finland
ABSTRACT
Changes in labour markets, too complex social security system, monetary disincentive problems and bureaucratic traps attached to the present social security system and wish to make work pay, and hence, to increase the employment rate, were the reasons why Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s centre-to-right coalition government —consisting of the Centre Party, the Finns Party and the National Coalition Party (the Conservatives)—decided to experiment with basic income (BI) in Finland. The Government reserved €20 million for the experiment which started 2017 and it will last two years. The basic income experiment is a part of “the experimental culture” that the Government wants to promote in order to improve evidence-based policy-making.With the experiment, the Government wants to see how it is possible to implement a new and seemingly simple policy instrument in the very complex institutional structure of the Finnish welfare state. The experiment is based on nation wide random sampling of 2,000 unemployed person. The control group is an identical sampling of the unemployed. The BI amount paid is €560 a month, net.
In his presentation Professor Olli Kangas – who was responsible for planning the experiment – presents background for the experiment and political support for the BI in Finland. He also presents how the model was selected for the experimentation, what were the background calculations, what is the research setting, sampling and how the experiment will be evaluated.
What is the experiment about? Watch a short movie on youtube:
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