2.4.4 The role of the state

In a city in the not-too-distant future, Raza and his family navigate the day with remarkable ease. After waving goodbye to his wife as she leaves to catch the bus to work, Raza walks to the local state school, just a 10-minute walk away, with his two young children. On his way back, he picks up groceries from a nearby market where many products are sold from local producers. 

By mid-morning, Raza is at his part-time job. He works with city planners and gardeners to green the city, removing pavement to allow rainwater to infiltrate the soil and restock groundwater sources. They are also planting diverse and resilient trees and vegetation to keep the city cool, increase habitats for organisms, and improve human wellbeing. His job is part of a guaranteed jobs programme, ensuring paid work for all that supports regenerating social and ecological systems. Raza’s income helps meet his family’s needs and save money for the future. Universal basic services  from the state provide health care, education and well-functioning infrastructure for water, energy and transportation.

Before heading home, Raza and his children stop by the community kitchen on their block to pick up dinner. The city government provided seed money and start-up advice for these kitchens, which reduce food and energy costs for residents who also work there regularly. 

Raza’s story shows how thoughtful state support  -- through laws, income support, and services -- can strengthen household care and domestic work, creating more resilient and equitable households and communities (Figure 2).

• regulations and incentives that promote flexible working hours: regulations requiring employers to offer work-from-home options, flexible hours, and job sharing help families balance paid work and unpaid care. Tax cuts or subsidies can help businesses with the costs of flexible employment;

• minimum wages: setting a high-enough legal minimum wage ensures workers earn enough to live decently. Minimum wages reduce poverty, income inequality, and gender inequality, providing vulnerable workers, often women, with a decent living. Adequate incomes make households more resilient and enable their investment in education and health;

• gender-responsive budgeting: states should spend money equitably to support care roles, often carried by women. For example, funding diverse public transportation networks that support mobility for care activities can help (Section 2.3.2);

• regulations and incentives that support commoning: states should make it easier for communities to self-organise for care services through supportive regulations and provide financial support and expert advice to community groups;

laws related to global care chains: host countries should ensure caregivers have labour rights and protections, including minimum wages, reasonable working hours, good conditions, and pathways to permanent residency or citizenship. Home countries should provide support systems for families left behind, including state-supported education and care.

Supporting household incomes can reduce household financial pressures and strengthen care for household members. This includes:

• means-tested social welfare payments: targeted financial help for those in greatest need (means-tested) can increase incomes for the poor. These payments cover essential expenses like housing, food, and healthcare, reducing poverty and income inequality, enhancing economic stability, and helping households withstand financial shocks.

• Universal basic income (UBI): providing consistent, unconditional financial support for all individuals reduces poverty and economic uncertainty. It helps households cover basic needs, enabling people to pursue education, career opportunities, and caregiving roles without constant financial pressure. UBI pilots in countries like the United States and Kenya show reduced stress and greater flexibility in managing care. The short video below outlines the experiments being done by the nongovernmental organisation Give Directly, which is providing important data for states to consider for universal basic income.

• job guarantees: ensuring everyone who is willing and able to work can find employment at a living wage supports household incomes. For example, India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) guarantees 100 days of paid work per year to rural households. The Austrian town of Marienthal offers a universal job guarantee to unemployed residents, focusing on human and ecological regeneration. These jobs support household incomes and invest in essential social and ecological services.

• Universal Basic Services (UBS): Ensures free access to essential services such as healthcare, education, elder care, childcare, and public transportation. This reduces living costs, allowing households to spend money on other needs, increasing financial resilience. Universal services improve equity and foster social cohesion. 

Many countries offer universal healthcare, where core services are free or low-cost, and the government covers costs for those who can't afford them. While common in high-income countries, even lower-income countries like Costa Rica with universal healthcare achieve high human development, highlighting the importance of this service.

• care-centred urban planning: well-designed communities make vital services easily accessible. When schools, healthcare, parks, and shops are within walking or biking distance, people save time and reduce transportation costs. Slower movement and local service use increase spontaneous community interactions. Many cities are adopting the 15-minute city concept to enhance care-centred planning, as shown in the video below.

• infrastructure: states providing essential physical structures like roads, water systems, energy networks, and public transportation make delivering services to households easier. Good water and energy infrastructure significantly reduces the time that caregivers, often women and girls, spend meeting household needs. In Singapore, the extensive public transportation network allows easy movement without expensive, polluting cars, highlighting infrastructure's importance for meeting human needs within planetary boundaries.

Option 3: 15-minute city - how does your area do?

Find your city or town on the map at www.15mincity.ai. The app will examine the local services in your area and give you a rating of how well the area meets the 15-minute-city goal.

• What types of needs-based services does your city or town do well at providing?

• What types of needs-based services does your city or town do less well at providing?

• Does the assessment of the app make sense given your experience?

• How might this information be useful to an entrepreneur looking to develop business ideas that meet real human needs within planetary boundaries?

Note: you can do your own research project around this, identifying essential services, mapping them, and talking with people in your community about whether they can meet their needs locally. See Subtopic 2.5 for more information on the project idea.

Option 4: Connecting example state strategies to planetary boundaries

If you have learned about planetary boundaries (Section 1.3.7) in your studies, choose one or more of the state strategies described in this section and explain whether and how these strategies also put less pressure on planetary boundaries. (Figure 6).

Ideas for longer activities and projects are listed in Subtopic 2.5 Taking Action

• Gender Awareness & Public Policy | Feminist Economics Part 4 - Feminist economist Jayati Ghosh explains gender is so important to consider in countries’ economic policies. Part of the video discusses how state cuts to essential services put pressure on households as a social shock absorber. Difficulty level: medium

• The Universal Basic Income Experiment in Kenya - Planet Money podcast episode about the results of GiveDirectly’s UBI experiment. Difficulty level: easy

• Guaranteed Basic Income Pilots Dashboard - a website monitoring data on the dozens of universal basic income pilots currently underway in the United States. Difficulty level: medium

• What happens when jobs are guaranteed? - a New Yorker article profiling the universal job guarantee of the Austrian town of Marienthal. Difficulty level: medium

• How to fix the UK’s care crisis | openDemocracy - a 13 minute video about the care crisis of the UK, but applicable to all countries where the economy relies too much on markets for care and state care has been cut, while the cost of living requires multiple household members to work full time to meet their needs. Difficulty level: easy

• Wages Against Housework (1975) - a powerful and controversial manifesto by feminist economist Silvia Federici advocating that household care and domestic work should be paid. Note: the text has some explicit language. Difficulty level: medium

• The women who demanded wages for housework - Witness History, BBC World Service - a short video on the campaign for women to be paid for housework. Difficulty level: easy

Dixson-Decleve, S., et al. (2022). Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.

Fried, B. and Wischnewski, A. (2022). Sorgende Städte, Vergesellschaftet due Care-Arbeit!  Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/images/publikationen/LUXEMBURG/LUX_21_03_WEB_b82497ae8f.pdf

Ghosh, J. (2020, September 7). Recognising and Rewarding Care Work: The Roles of Public Policies. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. https://feps-europe.eu/publication/recognising-and-rewarding-care-work-the-role-of-public-policies/.

Institute for New Economic Thinking (2022). World’s first universal job guarantee boosts wellbeing and eliminates long-term unemployment. University of Oxford. https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/news/worlds-first-universal-job-guarantee-boosts-wellbeing-and-eliminates-long-term-unemployment

OECD (2019), Enabling Women’s Economic Empowerment: New Approaches to Unpaid Care Work in Developing Countries, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ec90d1b1-en.

Romeo, N. (2022). “What happens when jobs are guaranteed?” New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/what-happens-when-jobs-are-guaranteed

Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (n.d.). “Caring Cities”. https://caring-cities.org/?#

Stanford Basic Income Lab (n.d.). The Guaranteed Income Pilots Dashboard. https://guaranteedincome.us/

Transformational Economics Commission (n.d.). Earth4All. The Club of Rome. https://earth4all.life/

Link to Quizlet interactive flashcards and terminology games for Section 2.4.4 The role of the state

state: a system that provides essential public services, and also governs and regulates other economic institutions

infiltration: the transfer of water through soils, collecting as groundwater

groundwater: water that collects underground in soil or in rock crevices and pores

job guarantee: where the state promises to make a job available to any individual who is ready and willing to work

regenerate: the process of restoring and revitalising something

system: a set of interdependent parts that organise to create a functional whole

income: money received from work or investments

universal basic services: a form of social welfare where all people receive access to free, basic services, like education and health care, funded by taxes and provided by the state

infrastructure: large scale physical systems that a society needs to function (roads, railways, electricity networks, etc)

care leave: time off of paid work used to care for others; can be paid or unpaid by the employer or state

urban planning: the process of designing and creating regenerative communities that meet human needs within planetary boundaries

norm: a social rule for accepted and expected behaviour, can be stated or unstated

regulation: a rule that guides individual or group behaviour and enforced by an authority

gender equality: when people of different genders are treated equally

intrahousehold bargaining: the negotiation among household members around resources, responsibilities, and decisions

power: the ability to influence events or the behaviour of other people

economic inequality: unequal distribution of income and opportunity between different groups in society

maternity leave: paid or unpaid time off of paid work for women to care for children

paternity leave: paid or unpaid time off of paid work for men to care for children

universal caregiver model: a model of organising work where both women and men are expected to participate in both unpaid care and paid work and share equal responsibility for both activities

tax: payment from individuals or organisations to the government, used to provide public infrastructure and services

subsidy: a payment made by the state to a business or individual to encourage certain behaviour

minimum wage: the lowest wage permitted by law or other agreement

poverty: the state of being poor

income inequality: when there are differences in income levels between people

gender inequality: people are not treated equally on the basis of their gender

resilient: able to recover after a disturbance

investment: money spent for the enhancement of human or physical capabilities

gender-responsive budgeting: policies that advocate for states to spend money equitably to support care roles, often carried by women.

care: the act of providing what is necessary for the health, welfare, upkeep, and protection of someone or something

commoning: when a group of people self-organise to manage shared resources

global care chain: a situation where caregivers from poorer countries migrate to wealthier ones, creating a global network of care relationships

means-tested: where a state benefit is given only to those who need it and need is tested, or checked, by the state

universal basic income (UBI): financial support from the state in the form of recurring payments to everyone to meet basic needs

social cohesion: the extent to which people in society feel connected to one another and share common values

15-minute city: an urban planning concept in which most human needs can be met by a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit ride from any point in the city

planetary boundaries: the limits of Earth systems to absorb the impact of human activity and continue to function