A wave of support? A natural experiment on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the popularity of a basic income.

IF 1.9 3区社会学 Q2 POLITICAL SCIENCE Acta Politica Pub Date : 2023-01-01 Epub Date: 2022-10-05 DOI:10.1057/s41269-022-00260-9

Arno Van Hootegem, Tijs Laenen

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Abstract

Although a basic income (BI) has already been widely debated, the COVID-19 crisis further intensified the discussion about this periodic cash payment that is unconditionally delivered to all. However, it remains unclear whether the crisis spurred a wave of public support for its introduction. To investigate this, we aim to answer two research questions: (1) How did support for a BI evolve in reaction to the COVID-19 crisis? and (2) To what extent did the evolution in support differ across regional contexts and social groups with varying levels of deprivation? We rely on a natural experiment by analysing data from the Belgian National Elections Study that was collected both before and during the pandemic. The results indicate an increase in support for a BI due to the pandemic, although it seems short lived and not necessarily specific to a BI. Importantly, however, the increase in popularity is only observable in the high-unemployment French-speaking region of Belgium and among relatively deprived groups.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41269-022-00260-9.

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一波支持?关于COVID-19大流行如何影响基本收入普及的自然实验

虽然基本收入已经引起了广泛的讨论，但新冠肺炎危机进一步加剧了对无条件向所有人提供定期现金支付的讨论。然而，目前尚不清楚此次危机是否引发了一波公众支持引入该机制的浪潮。为了调查这一点，我们的目标是回答两个研究问题：(1)在应对COVID-19危机的过程中，对商业智能的支持是如何演变的？(2)不同地区背景和不同贫困程度的社会群体在支持方面的演变有多大差异？我们依靠一项自然实验，分析大流行之前和期间收集的比利时全国选举研究数据。结果表明，由于大流行，对BI的支持有所增加，尽管这种支持似乎是短暂的，并不一定针对BI。然而，重要的是，受欢迎程度的增加只在比利时高失业率的法语区和相对贫困的群体中可见。补充信息：在线版本包含补充资料，下载地址为10.1057/s41269-022-00260-9。

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来源期刊

Acta Politica POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

2.60

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0.00%

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