EQUALITAS researcher Xavier Ramos has published, together with Timo Verlaat and Federico Todeschini, the article entitled “The employment effects of a means-tested guaranteed income policy” in the Journal of Public Economics.

This paper analyzes the labor market effects of B-MINCOME, a municipal anti-poverty program designed by the City Council of Barcelona in December 2017. The program offers a guaranteed income to vulnerable households and comprised two components: (i) a household-based cash transfer, adjusted for household  income and composition, and (ii) social activation policies.

The program evaluation was carried out through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) between 2017 and 2019, with 1,200 households followed from the program’s start until six months after the last transfer.

The results show that the program had sizeable negative employment effects on average: Roughly two years after the program began, main recipients in treatment households are 22 % less likely to work compared to their control counterparts. The heterogeneity analysis suggests substitution of labor for caregiving tasks.