ANALYSISback through taxation from higher-income
earners (which they can).
This is borne out by research
evidence. Studies of income distribution
data from Ethiopia, Malawi and
Zambia, for example, have shown
that very small differences in personal
and family circumstances separate
people in the bottom 50%-60% of per
capita consumption. When eligibility is
based on tiny changes in circumstance
which ordinary people don’t see as
real differences, it also feeds a sense of
unfairness, resentment and social tension.
Conditionalities
miss the point
The Treasury proposal seems especially
keen on limiting support by tying it to a
job-seeking conditionality. This kind of
approach is loaded with authoritarian
distrust. At root it assumes that people
with little or no money to spare have to
be forced to do what’s “good” for them.
Defenders say conditionalities offer
leverage to “engineer” certain desirable
behaviours (like enrolling and keeping
children in school, having them vaccinated
or having regular health check-ups).
In fact, research shows that it’s
very often not the conditionalities that
lead to the desired behaviours. It’s the
fact that families are more likely to keep
their children in school, or travel to a
health clinic, when they can afford to do
so. In South Africa, with close to half of
adults unable to find work, a job-seeking
conditionality is fundamentally misplaced.
A universal basic income (UBI)
would be much more effective at reaching
people with no or very low incomes, and
therefore better at reducing severe income
poverty. That’s because it avoids the typical
inefficiencies and unfairness associated
with targeted and/or means-tested
transfers, such as incomplete coverage,
arbitrary exclusion, complex and error-
filled administration, and corruption.
It would spare people the stigma and
humiliation of having to constantly
“prove” their poverty to state officials. It is
also much easier to implement, it radically
reduces opportunities for corruption, and it
provides regular, dependable support that
enables people to plan ahead.Work can mean
many things
Since everyone would get a UBI, it would
affirm the principle of universalism and
satisfy the criterion of fairness. Some
people find it disturbing that a UBI
would democratise people’s access to
entitlements, since the payment would
dispense with distinctions between people
who “deserve” support and those who donot. Waged work features centrally in that
moralistic outlook. It revolves around a
deep-felt sense that it is chiefly through
selling our labour that we “earn” our place
in society.
Such sentiments seem absurd in a
place like South Africa, where close to half
the adult population cannot find regular
work, let alone work that pays a living
wage. They’re also rooted in very distorted
and patriarchal notions of what counts as
work. Not having paid work doesn’t mean a
person is inactive or unproductive. A great
deal of crucial work goes unpaid and is
taken for granted: raising families, tending
the sick and frail, volunteering, assisting
neighbours, studying and acquiring skills,
or trying to get an income-earning activitygoing. Societies would cease functioning
without the (typically unpaid) reproductive
and other care work that women and girls
perform, for example. Work can mean
many things.
A UBI would underwrite all forms
of work, paid or not, as well as people’s
search for jobs, by providing a dependable
source of income for the tens of millions
of South Africans who currently lack it.
And it would face up to the fallacy that
having paid work is a sure shield against
poverty. Close to 40% of people with paid
work in South Africa do not earn enough to
regularly afford the basic living expenses
of their households, and almost one fifth
of workers in the formal sector are living in
poverty.
The need for a universal basic income
seems indisputable and its practical
advantages are huge –– for reducing
poverty and inequality, improving
children’s health and education status,
reducing stress and trauma, boostingeconomic demand, and enabling
communities to build greater resilience
against the impact of climate change.
Instead of proposing regressive,
exclusionary and unworkable income
support schemes, policymakers should
be sitting down with civil society to find
the best ways to start financing and
implementing the UBI our society deserves.Hein Marais is the author of In the
Balance: The Case for a Universal
Basic Income in South Af rica and
Beyond, published by Witwatersrand
University Press. The book is available
in bookstores, online and as an open
access download.The Treasury proposal seems especially keen on limiting
support by tying it to a job-seeking conditionality. This kind
of approach is loaded with authoritarian distrust. At root it
assumes that people with little or no money to spare have to
be forced to do what’s “good” for them.