Thread by @CleoGoodman

🧵 The final #BasicIncomeConversation Research Network Seminar with @MichaelMarmot, @ProfKEPickett and @MTJohnsonUBI is well worth a watch.

It's now up on YouTube to watch back. Take a look at the potential health impacts of #BasicIncome 👇 1/7

Sir Michael Marmot started off talking about life expectancy. Work in the Americas showed life expectancy increase with the average income per person. But that this wasn't the case in the USA. It's not just about money above a threshold, it's what you can do with the money. 2/7

He talked about cash transfers & evidence that generally giving poor people money is good for their health. But that cash transfers (and some "basic income" pilots) differ from #BasicIncome as money comes with conditions or is paid to a target group rather than universally. 3/7

And @MichaelMarmot ended by saying,

"Having enough money is vital (to our health) and that needs to be an entitlement, not charity but an entitlement that goes with being a member of society. Whether it should be universal it seems to me the jury is still out" 4/7

Professor Kate Pickett talked about the role of income more broadly, its symbolism - what it means to have an income or not. She told us that the amount of income has an impact but relative income i.e. inequality can be even more significant. 5/7

Kate talked about the mechanism through which health is impacted by income, it is the chronic stress of insecure income that makes us ill. She suggested the security of a #BasicIncome could be avert this. 6/7

Our final speaker Professor Matthew Johnson talked through the model of impact on health he and others have developed. Then gave powerful examples of the types of people who could be impacted by the introduction of a #UBI using his family's experience. 7/7