Wealth is Health: UBI for a healthier society?
A few of my classes this semester have focused on initiatives for redistributing wealth in society, one of which was Universal Basic Income (UBI). The idea behind UBI is that every adult, no matter of income/class/ethnicity/gender/etc., receives a regular state-awarded sum of money that would be enough to live on. With this, the idea is that extreme poverty would be eradicated as everyone would be able to afford their essentials, and well-being would increase as people would be given more freedom to spend their time as they would like, rather than having to toil away at a minimum wage job and stress about being able to afford to live.
From discussing these ideas in class, I now feel very on board with this idea and think it could completely revolutionise the way we understand work, health, and life in general as humans. With my interest in health inequalities, I’ve been trying to consider in more depth how UBI could really help us tackle some of these issues and set us up better to address the root causes of health disparities.
Firstly, it is widely understood that there is a strong relationship between health and deprivation, that those who live in poorer areas, or on lower incomes are often more likely to live in poor health. I have argued for most of my (short) academic career so far that this relationship is no coincidence, that government inaction on improving situations of deprivation directly results in poorer health for the people who live in these conditions. Part of why I feel so passionate about health inequality is because of its ability to be used as an indicator of deprivation, that often the relationship between health and deprivation is so strong that it can be physically mapped to identify the unequal distribution of power/resources. Thus, health inequalities display injustice at a state level, where academics like Coronini-Cronberg (et al., 2020; 179) describe them as “avoidable, unfair, and socially unjust systemic differences in health”.
This is where UBI comes in. As I’ve mentioned above, giving people enough money to live on, regardless of their employment status, would essentially work to eradicate extreme poverty in society. People would no longer be living below the poverty line as the amount they are given would be calculated to put them above this. And since health inequalities are understood to be a product of unequal distribution of resources, initiatives that aim to redistribute this wealth would radically change the health of the population.
Physical health would be improved in a myriad of ways. For example, working fewer hours or having more days off promotes taking care of your body and not putting it under extreme stress. Additionally, since manual labour jobs are often lower paid, they are largely carried out by those who need to work to survive. Providing UBI and removing this need for work would allow people to either quit these jobs or to do fewer shifts, and would also likely result in them being paid higher as essential yet undesirable jobs would require an incentive. Having more free time would also encourage people to exercise more, leading to further physical health improvements.
Beyond purely physical health, however, well-being would be greatly improved as people would be less stressed about work, and would essentially be given their time back to spend as they would like. And although studies show that work makes up an important aspect of well-being and purpose, UBI wouldn’t necessarily remove work, it would just remove the NEED for people to work. This means that work satisfaction would be improved as people would only continue to work if they were receiving non-monetary value from it, thus contributing to improved well-being.
Something I’d be interested to learn more about is how UBI could encourage the fostering of community since it would free people’s time up and potentially turn their attention to more meaningful things like human connection and relationships. Health and well-being are also known to be better when people are part of meaningful communities, so it would interesting to know how this could create even more benefits for society and for health as a whole.
Ultimately, I absolutely believe that a more economically equal society will create a more health-equal society and would thus love to see how UBI could help us on our way to justice.
