Prof Evelyn L Forget

Professor of Economics and Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Canada

'Is a basic income good for your health?'

How will a basic income affect the health of individuals, families and communities? Will reducing poverty have an impact on mental health? Will enhancing income security improve family wellbeing? How do communities change when their most marginalised members are guaranteed a basic income?

In this seminar, Evelyn Forget shared the story of how she tracked down the data from a then little-known Canadian experiment called Mincome to evaluate the impact of a basic income guarantee to some individuals in a larger city and, more importantly, to all members of a small town. The original experiment was concerned with a key question: would people continue to work if they received a basic income? Evelyn combined the original design and experimental data with health administration data not available to the original researchers to examine broader questions of individual, family and community health and wellbeing. The findings have been used to shape a new Canadian experiment and fuel other investigations of basic income around the world. As we begin to pilot basic income here in Scotland, Prof Forget’s work provides important guidance on how we might assess the impact of an ambitious, complex and wide-ranging initiative.

Evelyn L Forget is professor of economics and community health sciences at the University of Manitoba Canada, and author of ‘The Town with No Poverty’, a re-examination of the Mincome Basic Income experiment. Her most recent work examines the relationships between poverty, inequality, health and social outcomes. She is a member of the Ontario Basic Income evaluation team, and is widely called upon by governments, First Nations and international bodies for advice on basic income, social security and social experimentation.

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