Universal basic income and skill-biased technological change

Coelho, José (2020): Universal basic income and skill-biased technological change.

Abstract

In the last decades, income inequality has been on the rise in the U.S. The growing skill premium suggests the pivotal role of skill-biased technological change (SBTC) in promoting the observed increase in inequality levels. In this context, labor income tax structures have been central to the policy debate. I develop an overlapping generations model to perform a welfare evaluation of Universal basic income (UBI) tax structures and verify how these interact with SBTC. I find that an UBI system would have improved social welfare in 2010 when compared to the existing tax system and determine that this result is primarily motivated by SBTC.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Income Inequality, Skill Premium, Optimal Taxation, Universal Basic Income
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E24 - Employment ; Unemployment ; Wages ; Intergenerational Income Distribution ; Aggregate Human Capital ; Aggregate Labor Productivity; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook > E62 - Fiscal Policy; H - Public Economics > H2 - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue > H21 - Efficiency ; Optimal Taxation

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