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Loek Groot

Loek Groot

Instituut Gak Fellow

Project title

Basic income inspired piecemeal welfare reforms

Research question

The research question in this project is to investigate which piecemeal reforms - inspired by or linked to the basic income proposal - are most likely to command support and worth to be pursued.

Project description

Last decade, there has been an upsurge in both the popular and academic interest for the proposal of a basic income. Still, there is no major political party in Western democracies that endorses in its party manifesto a welfare reform along the lines of implementing a basic income. Moreover, no major societal actor, such as trade unions, employers’ associations, feminists and environmentalists, univocally endorses basic income. Thus despite the strong scholarly interest in basic income, it is highly unlikely that the implementation of basic income is pending or just around the corner. But it does not preclude that basic income may serve as an important source of inspiration for future welfare reforms. The research question in this project is therefore to investigate which piecemeal reforms – inspired by or linked to the basic income proposal – are most likely to command support and worth to be pursued.

 

Selected publications

Groot, L.F.M. (2002), Basic Income and Compensatory Justice, Journal of Social Philosophy, 33 (1), 141-61. link

Groot, L.F.M. (2004), Basic Income, Unemployment and Job Scarcity, Recherches Economiques de Louvain, vol. 70, nr. 3, 369-87. PDF

Groot, L., Muffels, R., and Verlaat, T. (2018), Welfare states’ social investment strategies and the emergence of Dutch experiments on a minimum income guarantee, Social Policy & Society, E-pub ahead of print at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746418000283.

Groot, Loek, Oostveen, Thijs (2019), Welfare effects of energy subsidy reform in developing countries, Review of Development Economics, DOI: 10.1111/rode.12619.

Veen, Robert van der and Loek Groot (2019), Unconditional Basic Income and the Rejuvenation of the Welfare State: A Review of Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght, Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, vol 40: 153, pp. 153-198.