
Matthew Thomas JohnsonNorthumbria University · Department of Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing
Matthew Thomas Johnson
PhD
Chair of the Common Sense Policy Group: http://commonsensepolicygroup.com/
About
129
Publications
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Introduction
I am Professor of Public Policy, Northumbria University, Chair of the Common Sense Policy Group, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS), Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Founding Editor of Global Discourse. I have secured over £3m to fund research focused on means of improving social security, health and wellbeing through public policy. I lead multidisciplinary teams examining the health case for Basic Income and Beveridge-style public policymaking.
Additional affiliations
September 2011 - August 2013
September 2010 - December 2010
Education
September 2007 - September 2008
September 2005 - December 2009
September 2004 - September 2005
Publications
Publications (129)
At the start of the pandemic, three of us came together out of shared concern for the place of emotions in politics and shared belief that many orthodoxies on fear as an instrument of public administration were just wrong. As the pandemic worked its way through communities and countries across the globe, it became increasingly clear that longstandi...
There is growing evidence of a causal relationship between income and health. At the same time, pressure on reactive health and care services in the UK is increasing. Previous work to quantify the relationship has focused on particular age groups, conditions, or single-item self-rated health. This article reports findings from a study that aimed to...
Basic Income is a largely unconditional, regular payment to all permanent residents to support basic needs. It has been proposed as an upstream health intervention by increasing income size and security. Modelling has quantified prospective effects on UK young people’s mental health. This paper extends this analysis to mental and physical health am...
Welfare policies have often been assessed on their financial impacts, for example, their effects on net household incomes and marginal and average tax rates. However, welfare policies can also have a substantial effect on population health and wellbeing. In addition, politicians must consider the electoral implications of policies that would affect...
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has described the UK economy as being in its worst state since the aftermath of WWII. But the Government’s new fiscal rules mean that it has shied away from a Beveridge-style public investment package that made Attlee’s administration from 1945 so successful. The change to the definition of debt annou...
Background
This study will evaluate the Basic Income for Care Leavers in Wales pilot (BIP), which is the most generous basic income scheme in the world. A cohort of care-experienced young people who become aged 18 during a 12-month enrolment period (July 2022-June 2023) are receiving £1,600 (before tax) per month for two years, and the Welsh Govern...
Studies have suggested that universal basic income (UBI) has the capacity to have substantial health benefits across the population at national level. Multiple impact pathways have recently been theorized and there are calls for trials to explore these pathways empirically. However, very limited research has taken place at local levels to explore p...
At the start of the pandemic, the three of us came together out of shared concern for the place of emotions in politics and shared belief that many orthodoxies on fear as an instrument of public administration were just wrong. As the pandemic worked its way through communities and countries across the globe, it became increasingly clear that longst...
Poverty is associated with psychological variables such as increased anxiety, increased depression, steeper time discounting and greater risk aversion. However, less is known about whether short‐term changes in financial circumstances are coupled to immediate psychological responses. We present data from the Changing Cost of Living study, in which...
Studies have suggested that Universal Basic Income (UBI) has the capacity to have substantial health benefits across the population at national level. Multiple impact pathways have recently been theorized and there are calls for trials to explore these pathways empirically. However, very limited research has taken place at local levels to explore p...
This article explores the interplay between crises, opportunities and democratic change in the United Kingdom. A vast body of scholarship underlines that crises open ‘windows of opportunity’ that can occasionally lead to radical shifts in the role of the state and the design of public policy. Even when a radical shift occurs, however, it has often...
UK adolescents and young adults are facing increasing rates of mental health problems and extremely difficult economic circumstances. There is strong evidence that interventions to increase income during adolescence can mitigate conditions such as anxiety and depression. However, policymakers lack quantified risk differences in the probability of m...
This report is the first annual report of the Basic income for care leavers in Wales pilot evaluation
For the sector, the assumption that young people need to go to university to increase their labour market value, alongside the introduction, rapid increase and then freezing of student tuition fees has created a financial bubble that has distorted investment in student facilities and accommodation and has shown signs of bursting during Covid 19. Th...
Poverty is associated with psychological variables such as increased anxiety, increased depression, steeper time discounting and greater risk aversion. However, less is known about whether short-term changes in financial circumstances are coupled to immediate psychological responses. We present data from the Changing Cost of Living study, in which...
Britain is increasingly a poor country with a small number of very rich people. Universities are increasingly being allocated responsibility for Levelling Up and for acting as civic institutions in support of regional development. This requires substantive engagement with those communities most excluded from Higher Education, both in co-production...
A large body of evidence indicates the importance of upstream determinants to health. Basic Income has been suggested as an upstream intervention capable of promoting health by affecting material, biopsychosocial and behavioural determinants. Calls are emerging across the political spectrum to introduce an emergency Basic Income to address socioeco...
Policymakers worldwide are realising that traditional welfare systems need modernisation. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with economic, ecological, and social crises intensifying, these systems are being exposed as inefficient, ineffective, and unjust. Policymakers have therefore begun exploring Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a potentia...
Objective
Universal Basic Income (UBI)—a largely unconditional, regular payment to all adults to support basic needs—has been proposed as a policy to increase the size and security of household incomes and promote mental health. We aimed to quantify its long-term impact on mental health among young people in England.
Methods
We produced a discrete...
This article presents an immanent critique of neoliberal welfare reform using observation of participatory research involving left behind communities in the North East of England and Australia. It argues that harms, such as passivity, invoked to reduce social security and increase conditionality are actually enhanced by austerity, conditionality an...
Coproduction has emerged as one of the key concepts in understanding knowledge-policy interactions and is associated with involvement, for example, of users of public services in their design and delivery. At a time of permacrisis, the need for transformative evidence-based policymaking is urgent and great. This is particularly important in highly...
Co-production has emerged as one of the key concepts in understanding knowledge-policy interactions and is associated with involvement, for example, of users of public services in their design and delivery. At a time of permacrisis, the need for transformative evidence-based policymaking is urgent and great. This is particularly important in highly...
What do people want from a welfare system? Previous research has suggested a list of possible features, such as that the system: reduces poverty; reduces inequality; improves mental and physical health; costs little; and rewards only the deserving. How do these different features trade off against one another to determine overall desirability? To a...
Objective Universal Basic Income(UBI)-a largely unconditional, regular payment to all adults to support basic needs-has been proposed as a policy to increase the size and security of household incomes and promote mental health. We aimed to quantify its long-term impact on mental health among young people in England. Method We produced a discrete-ti...
Background
Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been proposed as an upstream intervention with pathways to health impact by reducing poverty and unpredictability. Microsimulation modelling has suggested significant impact on mental health, but there is also evidence to suggest prospective impact on physical health, especially in terms of ‘lifestyle’ co...
Background
Studies have found that negative economic conditions could adversely affect mental health in children and young people. Our study modelled the impact of Universal Basic Income (UBI) – a largely unconditional, regular payment to all adult permanent residents to support basic needs – on mental health and mortality in young people.
Methods...
Points of Interest
Some disability organisations and leading figures have expressed concern about Universal Basic Income (UBI), a potential welfare system in which everyone receives a regular, secure and guaranteed payment. They feel that disabled people who currently receive support might lose out because they would not gain as much as others migh...
UK adolescents and young adults are facing increasing rates of mental health problems and extremely difficult economic circumstances. There is strong evidence that interventions to increase income during adolescence can mitigate conditions such as anxiety and depression. However, policymakers lack quantified risk differences in the probability of m...
This report outlines a proposal for a basic income micro-pilot. This proposal is the result of two years of community consultation in Central Jarrow and the Grange area of East Finchley.
Grange Big Local in East Finchley and Big Local Central Jarrow have led two years of community consultation to design a basic income pilot in their areas.
Commun...
Introduction
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, upstream interventions that tackle social determinants of health inequalities have never been more important. Evaluations of upstream cash transfer trials have failed to capture comprehensively the impacts that such systems might have on population health through inadequate design of the interve...
A substantial body of evidence suggests that young people, including those at the crucial transition points between 16 and 24, now face severe mental health challenges. In this article, we analyse data from 10 waves of a major UK longitudinal household cohort study, Understanding Society, to examine the relationship between income and anxiety and d...
This article presents a new account of the size and scale of ETA's activities. Highlighting a range of political considerations that shape existing records of impact, the article traces deployment of a range of distinct methods of data collection and evidence verification in creation of the most comprehensive database of ETA's activities produced t...
A substantial body of evidence suggests that young people, including those at the crucial transition points between 16 and 24, now face severe mental health challenges. In this article, we analyse data from 10 waves of a major UK longitudinal household cohort study, Understanding Society, to examine the relationship between income and anxiety and d...
If policy preferences follow material interests, the experience of socioeconomic disadvantage ought to increase support for redistributive policies. However, experiencing disadvantage might also reduce faith in government's ability to make things better, indirectly reducing support for redistributive action, and leading to a spiral of widening disa...
This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of a project entitled Assessing the prospective impacts of Universal Basic Income (UBI) on anxiety and depression among 14-24-year-olds. This serves as a pilot study for our much broader, long-term examination of the role of Universal Basic Income as a public health measure.
The project commenced...
Unlabelled:
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is often presented as desirable in theory, but unsaleable electorally. Policymakers fear intuitive, 'values'-based opposition from socially conservative voters, whom the policy would benefit materially, but who might regard it as 'giving others something for nothing'. We provide evidence from 'red wall' con...
https://www.compassonline.org.uk/publications/winning-the-vote-with-a-universal-basic-income-evidence-from-the-red-wall/
This report, backed by North of Tyne and Greater Manchester mayors and councillors across the North, suggests that a basic income could be the key to Labour’s success in regaining its former heartlands at the next election, with...
Critics of Universal Basic Income (UBI) have claimed that it would be either unaffordable or inadequate. This discussion paper tests this claim by examining the distributional impacts of three UBI schemes broadly designed to provide pathways to attainment of the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). We use microsimulation of data from the Family Resources...
Cultural evaluation denotes the assessment of the value of culture according to a range of metrics. The term does not inherently require reliance upon perfectionist or good-based criteria and may be grounded in deontological conceptions of rights and justice. It may often be associated with assessment across or between groups and societies.
This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of a project entitled Assessing the prospective impacts of Universal Basic Income (UBI) on anxiety and depression among 14-24-year-olds. This serves as a pilot study for our much broader, long-term examination of the role of Universal Basic Income as a public health measure.
The project commenced...
Introduction
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, upstream interventions that tackle social determinants of health inequalities have never been more important. Evaluations of upstream cash transfer trials have failed to capture comprehensively the impacts that such systems might have on population health through inadequate design of the interve...
Taking Richard Shweder’s (2021) article ‘The prosecution of Dawoodi Bohra women: some reasonable doubts’ as a target piece for discussion, the aim of this issue is to better understand these limitations. In the article, Shweder proposes that some forms of FGC be legalized, arguing that the form of FGC practiced among Dawoodi Bohra Muslims is less i...
Opposition to Universal Basic Income (UBI) is encapsulated by Martinelli’s claim that ‘an affordable basic income would be inadequate, and an adequate basic income would be unaffordable’. In this article, we present a model of health impact that transforms that assumption. We argue that UBI can affect higher level social determinants of health down...
https://www.bigissuenorth.com/comment/2021/08/why-dont-we-just-answer-our-mental-health-crisis-with-free-money/
The current crop of young people aged 14 to 24 may be the most vulnerable of all since the Second World War. Their mental health has been affected by a global financial crisis, a decade of austerity and now the Covid pandemic. For young...
The onset of the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic led to a marked increase in positive discussion of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in political and media circles. However, we do not know whether there was a corresponding increase in support for the policy in the public at large, or why. Here, we present three studies carried out during 2020 in UK and U...
In this article, we trace the failure of neoconservative and neoliberal thinkers to revise positions in light of changing US fortunes to highlight the need to evaluate paradigmatic contributions to US Foreign Policy. Drawing on the philosophy of science literature, we suggest that, in order for approaches to be taken seriously, their proponents oug...
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased interest in Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a means of addressing a range of socio-economic insecurities. While previous trials of cash transfer schemes have often focused on low-level transfers inadequate to satisfy the needs for which the policy was originally developed, emerging pilots are moving toward a posi...
Background
A large body of evidence indicates the importance of upstream determinants to health. Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been suggested as an upstream intervention capable of promoting health by affecting material, biopsychosocial and behavioural determinants. Calls are emerging across the political spectrum to introduce an emergency UBI t...
At a time of COVID-19 Pandemic, Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been presented as a potential public health ‘upstream intervention’. Research indicates a possible impact on health by reducing poverty, fostering health-promoting behaviour and ameliorating biopsychosocial pathways to health. This novel case for UBI as a public health measure is star...
The COVID-19 crisis has served, not just to instill fear in the populace, but to highlight the importance of fear as a motivating dynamic in politics. The gradual emergence of political philosophical approaches calling for concern for 'positive' emotions may have made sense under non-pandemic conditions. Now, however, describing fear in the face of...
Interest in Universal Basic Income (UBI) is often found in metropolitan areas among those in the gig economy. However, for those of us far removed from London, it could be the clearest means of remaking our regions.
The Spanish Government has committed to introducing a trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This is a regular payment to all adult citizens intended to provide security and predictability to recipients. The first response of many hard working people is that this is just another example of idleness being rewar...
The COVID-19 Pandemic is projected to cause an economic shock larger than the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008 and a recession as great as anything seen since the Great Depression in 1930s. The social and economic consequences of lockdowns and social distancing measures, such as unemployment, broken relationships and homelessness create potenti...
The 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a marked increase in positive discussion of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in political and media circles. However, we do not know whether there has been a corresponding increase in support for the policy in the public at large, or why. Here, we present two studies carried out in April and May 2020 in UK a...
Examination of the role of fear in Government messaging and the loss of control by the UK Government in light of Dominic Cummings' behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic: https://theconversation.com/dominic-cummings-and-boris-johnson-have-lost-control-of-the-fear-factor-139237
In England and Wales, the introduction of ?9,250 higher education (HE) tuition fees and concern more broadly about social mobility has led to the creation of a series of initiatives aimed at widening participation (WP). Increasingly, critics argue that these initiatives have failed to achieve genuine representativeness, with lower ranked universiti...
Background
In the context of the UK Government’s ‘prevention agenda’, Laura Webber and colleagues have called for a ‘health in all policies’ approach. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a system of cash transfers to citizens. Recent research suggests it could significantly benefit population health, including via reducing stress. However, a Finnish tr...
In the context of the UK Government's 'prevention agenda', Laura Webber and colleagues have called for a 'health in all policies' approach. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a system of cash transfers to citizens and recent research suggests it may have a significant impact on health, including via an underexplored role in reduced stress. However, de...
The UK Conservative Government 2017-2019 has taken steps to promote Engagement as a means of Knowledge Exchange (KE). In 2019/2020, a Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) will be introduced alongside the existing Research (REF) and Teaching (TEF) evaluations. Indeed, the OfS (Office for Students) and UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) (2018, 1) regard...
For the last three years, Centrists have campaigned relentlessly against the leadership of the Labour Party and, to a lesser degree, the Conservative Party, on the basis of Brexit. Woke Labour Centrists, apparent Lib Dem and Green allies and the 'liberal' media made a case for Remain that had already been rejected in 2016 and 2017 and was increasin...
For the last three years, ‘Centrists’ have campaigned relentlessly against the Labour Party leadership on the basis of Brexit. Woke Labour Centrists, their Lib Dem (and even some Conservative) allies as well as the ‘liberal’ media, made a case for Remain that had already been rejected in 2016 and 2017. Beyond the centrist echo chamber in constituen...
This article draws upon clinical experience of GPs working in a deprived area of the North East of England to examine the potential contribution of Universal Basic Income to health by mitigating ‘patient-side barriers’ among three cohorts experiencing distinct forms of ‘precariousness’: 1) long-term unemployed welfare recipients with low levels of...
We seek to clarify and assess the underlying moral reasons for opposing all medically unnecessary genital cutting of female minors, no matter how severe. We find that within a Western medicolegal framework, these reasons are compelling. However, they do not only apply to female minors, but rather to non-consenting persons of any age irrespective of...
Seán Byers presents a comprehensive overview of the post-crash political landscape in Northern Ireland. His most significant contribution is, perhaps, the most understated: that the Blairite settlement is incapable of resolving the social cleavages that threaten any possibility of harmony. He highlights, again and again, the ways in which apparentl...
This is an introduction to Militancy and the working class: The case of Northern Ireland. I outline the substantive content of the issue, arguing that the dynamics at play render much of our established understandings contestable.
Jonathan Evershed presents a compelling account of the clear dangers that lie in forms of state-led remembrance. The danger is, of course, that, in commemorating, actual experience is lost. While I do not wish to challenge any of the core claims in the piece, I do think that there is one element that requires greater examination: Evershed’s claim t...
Participatory action research (PAR) investigates issues through collaboration and cooperation between academics and non-academic community members. Recently, awareness of such approaches has increased as the need for transformative research and contribution to social goods has become clear. However, participatory methods have been deployed unevenly...
In 2015/16, stress was found psychologically to be responsible for 37% of all work-related illnesses and 45% of all working days lost due to illness in Great Britain. Stress has also been linked to long-term chronic health conditions—including heart disease, stroke, cancer, type 2 diabetes, arthritis and depression—responsible for 70% of NHS Englan...
How should academic staff engage in outreach with communities outside of the university? The need of academics to answer this question has intensified in the UK given the changing priorities of academic job roles, shaped by increasing institutional concern for widening participation, graduate employability and research impact in an era of austerity...
Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been advanced to deal with a number of challenges. Seldom have trials of UBI been designed adequately to measure its impact on the health of participants across the spectrum of socioeconomic status. But the data that does exist suggests that policy has the potential to improve this aspect of people’s lives. Two theo...
A universal basic income could alleviate GPs’ gatekeeping role in access to welfare benefits, freeing them up to do their real job of caring for patients.
John McDonnell has announced that Labour may include a trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the next Labour Party Manifesto. UBI – state provision of unconditional monthly stipends to all adult citizens – has been justified on myriad grounds: citizenship, welfare reform, growth. However, its biggest and, as yet, unexplored contribution may be t...
The Association for Academic Outreach (http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/afao/) is a loose coalition of academics working in universities engaged with the world outside. The 92 members are from a wide range of intellectual, social and economic backgrounds, drawn from each and every subject area, discipline and type of institution. It therefore represents many...
This book attempts to explore the effects of neoliberalism on particular forms of community. Guy Standing (2011) has popularised the notion of precariousness to describe the unpredictable neoliberal conditions faced by radically different people throughout the world. Members of Standing’s ‘precariat’ lack occupational identities, treat work and oth...
In this article, we examine ways in which critics of liberalism come to adopt, without acknowledgement, ‘liberal’ forms of public reason in responding to homogenising tendencies of fundamentalist doctrines. We focus on the divergent approaches of John Gray and Slavoj Žižek, arguing that the former upholds a comprehensive form of liberalism, while t...
The emergence of the ‘Widening Participation’ (WP) agenda in English Higher Education (HE) has been intensified by the shift to tuition fees of £9000 or more. Now, universities have an obligation to devote funds to encouraging participation of students from a range of groups identified by the Office for Fair Access as being under-represented and di...
This issue of Global Discourse represents the culmination of a series of collaborations exploring ‘precariousness’ stemming back to 2013 – the year in which we last published an issue on the topic (see Johnson 2013). Here, we attempt to explore the effects of neoliberalism on particular forms of community through the work of participants in ‘A
Cros...
In recent years, the notion of pluralism or, as it is often termed, “multiculturalism,” has been subject to critique by a range of public figures on the right of the political spectrum, such as David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Donald Trump. While “multiculturalism” is presented as being antithetical to the traditions of Western societies, it is, in...
Marx’s development and deployment of a teleological account of history derived, in part, from Hegelian tenets has been central to modern notions of progress. This stands in contrast to Rousseau’s romanticism, which holds that human well-being declines as technology advances. In this article, I challenge these two positions through engagement with t...
For much of 2010-2015, I ran a participatory project involving community co-researchers from Ashington, Northumberland. The project traced the ways the dissolution of institutions through neoliberalism was inflicting on once functioning communities avoidable harm, despite valiant efforts of community members. Nationalized industry had provided subs...
Aboriginal Australian public intellectual Noel Pearson has gained prominence and influence for his brand of policy reform in Indigenous affairs by drawing upon the capabilities approach. This article challenges the coherence of Pearson's position, arguing that his unrelenting focus on personal responsibility leads him to conflate different elements...
In his recent work, Guy Standing has identified a new class which has emerged from neo-liberal restructuring with, he argues, the revolutionary potential to change the world: the precariat. This, according to Standing, is 'a class-in-the-making, internally divided into angry and bitter factions' consisting of 'a multitude of insecure people, living...
The politics of the twenty-first century is marked by dissent, tumult and calls for radical change, whether through food riots, anti-war protests, anti-government tirades, anti-blasphemy marches, anti-austerity demonstrations, anti-authoritarian movements and anti-capitalist occupations. Interestingly, contemporary political protests are borne of b...
David Cameron’s declaration that there will be ‘no more’ passive tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) comes against the backdrop of the revelation that 1,000 cases of FGM had been recorded in three months this year as part of NHS data collection on
the practice. This data collection commenced in April as part of the Government’s
eradicatio...