Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity and undermines one’s capacity to fully develop as a human being.
Extreme poverty impacts not only the access to essential material goods but affects mental and physical health, causes undernourishment, decreases resilience to shocks and limits access to knowledge,
institutions and legal rights. In most countries being poor reduces decisively the opportunities of future generations to gain access to education and decent work to ultimately pursue prosperity
and escape living conditions undignifying human life.
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Poor neighbourhoods create systemic challenges widening the poverty trap despite individual capacity through hard environmental conditions, unfavourable infrastructure and higher crime rates.
Widespread poverty is not a result of a failure of individual motivation or talents. More than all individual factors combined, “more than half of the variability in global income is explained by
circumstances given at birth” (Milanovic 2015) wherein 60 percent is explained by the country of birth and another 20 percent by the income level of our parents.
Money is not the solution to everything but having no money is the problem for most things.
We all claim for ourselves that we know how to spend money effectively to progress and pursue happiness.
But if it comes to the most vulnerable, the poor we often think that we know better how to improve their lives and how they should behave to make it out of misery.
Life is complex, needs are dynamic and subject to individual prioritization.
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SDG-BIG instead shares the belief that self-determination and personal choices to improve one’s life are universal traits.
Our hypothesis is that in a functional market economy with access to goods and services the obstacles for less privileged communities to thrive are resources rather than motivation and capacity.
We believe that administratively extensive development projects tackling individual misery through rigid support of goods or services
often just can be replaced by more cost-effective direct cash transfer programs.
Food, education, medicine, transport, housing or entertainment - people know best what they need to improve their lives.
Through the provision of a small unconditional Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) to poor households we aim to overcome some of the obstacles to development while transparently monitoring changes in the livelihood of our beneficiaries guided by the targets of the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Our long term, stable financial support potentially provides the opportunity for the beneficiaries to spend or invest the additional resources according to their own individual situation and ideas. The support is unconditional such that decisions on spending are not questioned and the feedback loops remain reliable and honest.
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In the worst-case scenario, the additional money is not used wisely, not invested effectively and does not create any impulse for development. In this case the program will end up being a simple charity program to a poor community reducing temporarily the burden of poverty.
In the best-case scenario, the additional income will increase resilience to shocks, cover monetary gaps for basic goods and services and will be invested in a sustainable way to reduce dependencies on external income. It can contribute to break the transgenerational poverty trap by raising educational levels of children and stimulate economic activity through the additional purchasing power in the community.
Our aim is to design the project in an effective and scalable manner such that every regular donation to the project directly enables us to increase the numbers of beneficiaries.
Your choice: 5 EUR / month
Donate now
Alternatively,
please provide international support to:
SDG Basic Income Guarantee e.V.
IBAN: DE77 7015 0000 1006 9729 52
or provide Namibian support to:
Extra Insights Data Hive Organization
FNB Account- No. 62276112126
Branch Code 282273
Katutura is the informal settlement district of Namibia’s capital Windhoek. It comprises parts of completely unregulated settlements and
areas of formalized and administered shacks with basic access to electricity and water subject to a monthly rent.
Living here for decades, some residents of Katutura have managed to enhance their housing significantly while others remain in poor, inhumane living conditions.
Windhoek has not developed a comprehensive public transport system but is mainly dependent on taxis and individual transport which isolates many residents of
Katutura from other areas of the city. Despite being far from the city center, Katutura has developed its own local economy providing access to goods and services to its residents.
In this context, we provide a basic income to families and individuals having a stable place of living so that a participation in the project can be administered.
Therein, the living situation of the beneficiaries varies significantly from big families relying mainly on the small pension of the grandmother or the revenues
from selling basic food to couples living in poverty despite having jobs or individuals with a professional education currently unemployed.
We have decided to help by using an unconditional basic cash income scheme. The important question is of course: what evidence do we have that the beneficiaries spend the money “wisely” and that it really leads to an improvement of living conditions? We all know the stereotypes like that you should not give money to poor people because they might spend it on alcohol or drugs or that it discourages from seeking work. Fortunately, there is scientific evidence that cash transfers in developing countries could be an effective tool to improve livelihood:
“First, evaluations generally have not found the negative impacts that many feared. Reviewing evidence on temptation goods, Evans & Popova (2017) find that transfers had on average reduced expenditure on temptation goods by 0.18 standard deviations. In other words, far from blowing their transfers on alcohol and tobacco, recipients appear to drink and smoke less. This finding in no way diminishes the seriousness of substance abuse as an issue for the poor, but it does suggest that lack of money may be a cause of substance abuse rather than a constraint on it.”
“Second, evaluations have found a great diversity of positive impacts. For example, a partial list of outcomes affected in a positive way in one study or another, according to Bastagli et al. (2016), includes income, assets, savings, borrowing, total expenditure, food expenditure, dietary diversity, school attendance, test scores, cognitive development, use of health facilities, labor force participation, child labor migration, domestic violence, women’s empowerment, marriage, fertility, and use of contraception.”
Source: Abhijit Banerjee, Paul Niehaus, and Tavneet Suri: Universal Basic Income in the Developing World. In: Annual Review of Economics 2019.11: pages 959-983. https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2022-10/annurev-economics-080218-030229.pdf
We decided to use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as our guiding principles to assess the impact of our initiative over time. There is solid evidence that cash transfers achieve positive effects on a number of key SDG goals:
SDG 1: No Poverty: End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
“Overall, evidence consistently demonstrates that unconditional cash in low- and middle income countries leads to a measurable decrease in poverty”
Source: Rebecca Hasdell: What we know about universal basic income – a cross-synthesis of reviews. Stanford Basic Income Lab, July 2020. Page 15. https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf
“There is a comparatively large evidence base linking cash transfers to reductions in monetary poverty. The evidence extracted consistently shows an increase in total and food expenditure and reduction in […] poverty measures. […] Overall, impacts on savings, and on livestock ownership and/or purchase, as well as use and/ or purchase of agricultural inputs, are consistent in their direction of effect, with almost all statistically significant findings highlighting positive effects of cash transfers, though these are not universal to all programmes or to all types of livestock and inputs.”
Source: Francesca Bastagli et al.: Cash transfer: what does the evidence say? Overseas Development Institute, July 2016. Pages 7 and 8. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/11316.pdf
SDG 2: Zero Hunger: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
“There is good evidence to demonstrate that an injection of cash increases household expenditures. Results are positive for food expenditure in all country contexts and the purchase and ownership of assets such as livestock in low-and middle-income countries.”
Source: Rebecca Hasdell: What we know about universal basic income – a cross-synthesis of reviews. Stanford Basic Income Lab, July 2020. Page 15. https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf
“…research found that rural Kenyans who received a daily universal basic income equivalent to $0.75 USD were less likely to go hungry and even recorded improvements in their physical and mental health.”
Source: Betsy Vereckey: How a universal basic income stabilized Kenyans in bad times. MIT Sloan, Oct. 1, 2020. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-a-universal-basic-income-stabilized-kenyans-bad-times
“[…], most of the studies we have reviewed on cash transfers show meaningful impacts on food consumption (~20% increase over baseline/control group spending on food).
Source: Give Well: Cash Transfers. Published December 2012, Last updated: November 2018. https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/cash-transfers
“Monthly transfers are superior to lump-sum transfers in terms of their effects on food security, whereas lump-sum transfers show larger effects than monthly transfers on asset holdings.”
Source: Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro: The short-term impact inf unconditional cash transfers to the poor: experimental evidence from Kenya. Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2016. Page 2027. https://haushofer.ne.su.se/publications/Haushofer_Shapiro_UCT_QJE_2016.pdf
SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
“There is consistent evidence across contexts for improvements to health status and to the myriad behavioral and social factors that are linked to leading causes of premature ill health, disability, and death. A small number of studies report on disease outcomes, with some evidence for clinically meaningful reductions in the likelihood of having any disease with sustained effects two years into the interventions17 and reductions in sexually transmitted infections.”
Source: Rebecca Hasdell: What we know about universal basic income – a cross-synthesis of reviews. Stanford Basic Income Lab, July 2020. Page 17. https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf
“The available evidence shows that, on the whole, cash transfers – both CCTs and UCTs – have increased the uptake of health services. Of the 15 studies reporting overall effects on the use of health facilities, nine report statistically significant increases.”
Source: Francesca Bastagli et al.: Cash transfer: what does the evidence say? Overseas Development Institute, July 2016. Page 8. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/11316.pdf
SDG 4: Quality Education: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
“Overall, the available evidence highlights a clear link between cash transfer receipt and increased school attendance. […] With the exception of one study, the findings point towards an increase in school attendance and a decrease in school absenteeism.”
Source: Francesca Bastagli et al.: Cash transfer: what does the evidence say? Overseas Development Institute, July 2016. Page 7. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/11316.pdf
“There is considerable evidence of an impact on educational attainment across country contexts. Clear and significant impacts are well-documented for educational outcomes that would be expected in the short term, such as school enrollment and attendance”
Source: Rebecca Hasdell: What we know about universal basic income – a cross-synthesis of reviews. Stanford Basic Income Lab, July 2020. Page 16. https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf
SDG 5: Gender Equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
“The available evidence shows that transfers can reduce physical abuse of women by men, but also that they may increase non-physical abuse, such as emotional abuse or controlling behaviour. It supports both the theory that increased income lowers stress-related abuse and the theory that increased income enables the woman to bargain out of abuse. The relatively strong evidence that decision-making power increases for women in the beneficiary household also offers substance to this latter theory.”
Source: Francesca Bastagli et al.: Cash transfer: what does the evidence say? Overseas Development Institute, July 2016. Page 10. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/11316.pdf
SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
“The evidence extracted for this review shows that for just over half of studies on adult work (participation and intensity), the cash transfer does not have a statistically significant impact. Among those studies reporting a significant effect among adults of working age, the majority find an increase in work participation and intensity. In the cases in which a reduction in work participation or work intensity is reported, these reflect a reduction in participation among the elderly, those caring for dependents, or they are the result of reductions in casual work.”
Source: Francesca Bastagli et al.: Cash transfer: what does the evidence say? Overseas Development Institute, July 2016. Page 9. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/11316.pdf
“The evidence from diverse interventions in low-, middle-, and high-income contexts indicates minimal impact on aggregate measures of labor market participation, with some studies reporting an increase in work participation. When reductions do occur, time is channeled into other valued activities such as caregiving.”
Source: Rebecca Hasdell: What we know about universal basic income – a cross-synthesis of reviews. Stanford Basic Income Lab, July 2020. Page 16. https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf