Combining anti-poverty reduction policies for a better society for all
Science Policy Around the Web – January 30th, 2023
By: Toluleke Famuyiwa, PhD
Combining anti-poverty reduction policies for a better society for all
#sciencepolicy #poverty #interventions #povertyreduction #increasecreativity #fullpotential
No one exists without a negative impact from poverty because a stop to ravaging poverty will increase productivity and creativity. There is a ray of hope if the right mix of policies are utilized. The advantages of this policy synergize, but not the disadvantages. However, synergistic solutions are not easy to achieve because there are many possible combinations, most of which may not produce a desirable result. Therefore, a large program of anti-poverty research should be utilized to find the most effective policy permutations using mathematical modeling.
There’s good reason for anticipation because synergism has worked well in other fields. For example, in drug combination discovery to treat diseases such as cancer.
Numerous poverty alleviation policies have been tested, but hardly in combination. An example of synergistic design that should be investigated is basic income program for workers and a wage subsidy program for employers. In this project, all citizens within a selected community would receive a basic income, with no required payback after regular income tax, and employers would receive a nonrefundable tax credit, making it affordable for them to hire employees with limited or no experience. The wage subsidy would encourage employers to offer an adequate number of minimum wage positions to candidates who would otherwise be considered unemployable. It would be understandable to worry that a basic income policy, alone, could gradually reduce the value of hard work, although short-term basic income analysis has not confirmed this fear.
To increase the potential for success for everyone, we need to identify; the most cost-effective combinations of antipoverty interventions, the optimal investments to achieve a sufficient reduction of poverty and the strategy to communicate these findings to governments and the public for approval.
A Research Agenda to Get More People Out of Poverty (https://issues.org/research-agenda-more-people-out-poverty-zhao-woo-whitehead/)
(JIAYING ZHAO, YUEN PAU WOO, LORNE WHITEHEAD, https://issues.org/research-agenda-more-people-out-poverty-zhao-woo-whitehead/)