How much healthier and higher-IQ would the population be if poor children had access to better food, better housing, and parent’s with more free time and energy?
Children’s access to food and housing quality don’t depend on whether the help that their parents get from the government comes with the government pressuring the parents to get work or not.
Not directly, no. But I’m fairly sure “Children have those things, but their parent(s) have to accept a job even if it has odd and inconsistent hours and is in an inaccessible-by-public-transit location so they’re never home to cook, or help them with homework, or read to them at bed time” is a very different scenario than “Children have those things, and parent(s) who are around in the mornings and evenings.”
I know I’m cherry picking a specific subset of scenarios here, but I do think I illustrate real and important ways in which a UBI would be better than the EITC, just by creating those possibilities.
I don’t think there a good reason to abbreviate EITC here given that it’s not a common abbreviation and not spelled out.
In any caseearned income tax credit is not the only way to provide government welfare. There’s welfare for the unemployed. The key difference of UBI is that the welfare that unemployed get doesn’t come with a requirement of them searching work and accepting job offers.
Arguing that time for children is important is a different argument then that having enough food is important.
There is clear evidence that malnutrition keeps cognitive ability down but I’m not aware of clear evidence that parents having time for children is predictive of adult cognitive capacity.
That’s very fair (on all counts). I have no studies to show, but would be surprised if it turned out that parental time and stress weren’t correlated with childhood nutrition quality, though that’s a very weak claim on my part.
Children’s access to food and housing quality don’t depend on whether the help that their parents get from the government comes with the government pressuring the parents to get work or not.
Not directly, no. But I’m fairly sure “Children have those things, but their parent(s) have to accept a job even if it has odd and inconsistent hours and is in an inaccessible-by-public-transit location so they’re never home to cook, or help them with homework, or read to them at bed time” is a very different scenario than “Children have those things, and parent(s) who are around in the mornings and evenings.”
I know I’m cherry picking a specific subset of scenarios here, but I do think I illustrate real and important ways in which a UBI would be better than the EITC, just by creating those possibilities.
I don’t think there a good reason to abbreviate EITC here given that it’s not a common abbreviation and not spelled out.
In any case earned income tax credit is not the only way to provide government welfare. There’s welfare for the unemployed. The key difference of UBI is that the welfare that unemployed get doesn’t come with a requirement of them searching work and accepting job offers.
Arguing that time for children is important is a different argument then that having enough food is important.
There is clear evidence that malnutrition keeps cognitive ability down but I’m not aware of clear evidence that parents having time for children is predictive of adult cognitive capacity.
That’s very fair (on all counts). I have no studies to show, but would be surprised if it turned out that parental time and stress weren’t correlated with childhood nutrition quality, though that’s a very weak claim on my part.