We were privileged to work with the Health Case for Basic Income research group on a case study of their work. to show how a universal basic income would have positive health benefits, is feasible and affordable, and help to reduce inequality and poverty levels. For an introduction you can read the accompanying blog post, or see the full case study here.
Dr Liming Li, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow nigeria rcs data at King’s College London, shared about her research into welfare benefits, single mothers and the impact on children’s mental health on the Data Impact blog. She used the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) that is part of the Millennium Cohort Study to conduct this research which found that Lone Parent Obligation reform increased lone mother’s employment and income, but this failed to translate into improvements in mental health for their adolescent children.
Also using the SDQ for her research was Naomi Miall, one of our Data Impact Fellows. She was looking into children’s mental health in the wake of COVID-19. An interesting insight was that the gap between typically advantaged groups were those who experienced the most decline. Whilst this could be due to many things, one intriguing hypothesis Naomi poses is that this might indicate that the lockdowns and other measures made the lives of those children more in line with those children who experience similar disruption and disadvantage in their day-to-day life.