thesis for basic income

The Deep and Enduring History of Universal Basic Income

Support for universal basic income (UBI) has grown so rapidly over the past few years that people might think the idea appeared out of nowhere. In fact, the idea has roots going back hundreds or even thousands of years, and activists have been floating similar ideas with gradually increasing frequency for more than a century.

Since 1900, the concept of a basic income guarantee (BIG) has experienced three distinct waves of support, each larger than the last. The first, from 1910 to 1940, was followed by a down period in the 1940s and 1950s. A second and larger wave of support happened in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by another lull in most countries through about 2010. BIG’s third, most international, and by far largest wave of support began to take off in the early 2010s, and it has increased every year since then.

Before the First Wave

We could trace the beginnings of UBI into prehistory, because many have observed that “prehistoric” (in the sense of nonliterate) societies had two ways of doing things that might be considered forms of unconditional income.

First, nomadic, hunting and gathering societies of less than 60 people have often been observed to treat all land as commons , meaning that everyone can forage on the land but no one can own it. A similar right to use land has existed in many small-scale agrarian communities right up to the enclosure movement, which was not complete in Europe until the 20th century and is not complete around the world today. The connection between common land and UBI is that both institutions allow every individual to have access to the resources they need to survive without conditions imposed by others.

Second, most observed small-scale, nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies had strong obligations to share what they had with others. If someone camping with the group found more food than they and their immediate family could eat in one meal, they had to share it with everyone in the camp, including people who rarely or never brought back food for the community. The food shared around camp could be seen as a “basic” income.

Some trace the beginning of UBI history to ancient Athens, which used revenue from a city-owned mine to support a small cash income for Athenian citizens.

The modern definition of UBI stipulates the grant must be in cash, and because small-scale hunter-gatherer or agrarian communities do not have cash economies, they do not have UBIs. But these practices show how the values that motivate much of the modern UBI movement are not new to politics but have been recognized and practiced for a very long time.

Some writers trace the beginning of UBI history to ancient Athens, which used revenue from a city-owned mine to support a small cash income for Athenian citizens. This institution sounds like a UBI, except that the meaning of citizen was very different in ancient Athens. Citizens were a small, elite portion of the population. Noncitizens, such as slaves, women, and free noncitizen males, were the bulk of the population and virtually all of its labor force. A UBI for the elite is no UBI at all.

Proposals that begin to fit the modern definition of UBI begin in the 1790s with two writers, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. Paine’s famous pamphlet “Agrarian Justice” argued that because private ownership of the land had deprived people of the right to hunt, gather, fish, or farm on their own accord, they were owed compensation out of taxes on land rents. He suggested this compensation should be paid in the form of a large cash grant at maturity plus a regular cash pension at retirement age. That amounts to a stakeholder grant plus a citizens pension: nearly, but not quite, a UBI.

From a similar starting point, Spence carried the argument through to a full UBI, calling for higher taxes on land and a regular, unconditional cash income for everyone. If anyone can be said to be the “inventor” of UBI, it is Thomas Spence, but his proposal remained obscure, and the idea had to be reinvented many times before it became widely known.

Joseph Charlier, a Belgian utopian socialist author, reinvented the idea of UBI in 1848, suggesting the socialization of rent, with the proceeds to be redistributed in the form of a UBI.

Henry George, a late 19th-century economist, set out to solve the problem of persistent poverty despite economic progress. He proposed taxing land value at the highest sustainable rate and using the proceeds for public purposes. At one point, he suggested that part of the proceeds could be distributed in cash to all citizens, but UBI was never a central part of his proposal.

BIG proposals remained sparse until the early 1900s.

The First Wave

By the early 20th century, enough people were discussing BIG to constitute its first wave — or at least its first ripple — of support. The idea was still new enough that most advocates had little knowledge of each other, and they all tended to give their versions of the program a different name.

In the United Kingdom, Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf both praised the idea in their writings without naming it. In 1918, Dennis and E. Mabel Milner started the short-lived State Bonus League, which briefly attempted to get a conversation started with pamphlets and other publications, including what was probably the first full-length book on UBI: Dennis Milner’s 1920 publication “Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output.”

Several economists and social policy analysts, especially in Britain, discussed UBI, often under the name social dividend , in the 1930s and early 1940s. These included James Meade (economist and later Nobel laureate), Juliet Rhys-Williams (writer and politician), Abba Lerner (economist), Oskar Lange (economist), and G. D. H. Cole (political theorist, economist, and historian). It was apparently Cole who coined the term basic Income in 1935, although that term did not become standard for more than 50 years.

Major C. H. Douglas (a British engineer) included UBI under the name national dividend in a wider package of proposed reforms he called social credit . His ideas were most prominent in Canada, where the Social Credit Party held power in two western provinces on and off between 1935 and 1991, but the party abandoned support for Douglas’s proposed dividend not long after it first took power.

In 1934, Louisiana senator Huey Long debuted a Basic Income plan he called Share Our Wealth. He seems to have come up with the idea on his own; there is no evidence that he was influenced by the ideas spreading around the United Kingdom in those years. Long’s plan might have served as the basis for a presidential run in 1936 had he not been assassinated in 1935.

Although some of these early advocates were highly respected people, they were unable to get any form of BIG onto the legislative agenda in this era. As World War II drew to a close, most Western democracies built up their welfare systems on a conditional model, typified by the British government’s famous Beveridge Report, which recommended fighting poverty, unemployment, and income inequality with a greatly expanded welfare system based on the conditional model. Discussion of BIG largely fell out of mainstream political discussion for nearly two decades.

The Second Wave

Discussion of BIG was kept alive between the first and second waves largely by economists who increasingly portrayed it as an interesting theoretical alternative to existing social policies.

During the second wave, the phrases income guarantee and guaranteed income were often used without indicating whether the guarantee was a negative income tax (NIT) or a UBI. When specified, it was most often an NIT. However, the second wave was extremely important in directing international attention toward the idea of creating a world in which everyone would have an income above poverty level.

The second wave took off in the early to mid-1960s, when at least three groups in the United States and Canada separately started promoting the idea at about the same time. First, feminists and welfare rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr., mobilized people frustrated by inadequate and often demeaning conditional programs. The feminist and welfare rights movements for BIG were closely tied together because there was widespread belief that existing welfare programs were inadequate, punitive, and too closely tied to the belief that “typical” families were “headed” by a “male breadwinner” with a “housewife.” Feminists led a large grassroots effort to replace U.S. welfare programs with BIG, and it became an official demand of the British Women’s Liberation Movement by the 1970s.

Some futurists saw a guaranteed income as a way to protect workers from disruptions to the labor market caused by the computer revolution.

Second, futurists such as Robert Theobald and Buckminster Fuller saw a guaranteed income as a way to protect workers from disruptions to the labor market caused by the computer revolution. This effort foreshadowed the automation argument for UBI in the 2010s, but it dropped off considerably in the 1980s and 1990s.

Third, several Nobel Prize–winning economists — including James Tobin, James Meade, Herbert Simon, James Buchannan, and Milton Friedman — and many other prominent economists began arguing that a guaranteed income would represent a more effective approach to poverty than existing policies. To them, BIG would have been an attempt to simplify and streamline the welfare system while also making it more comprehensive. The interest from economists made BIG a hot topic among policy wonks in Washington and Ottawa.

The mainstream media started paying attention to NIT around the time Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty . Politicians and policy advisors began to take up the idea. The Canadian government released several favorable reports on guaranteed annual income in the 1970s. For a short time, many people saw some kind of BIG as inevitable and as the next step in social policy: a compromise that everyone could live with. People on the left viewed it as the final piece of the welfare system — a policy that would fill in the remaining cracks. Centrists, conservatives, and people from the burgeoning libertarian movement saw it as a way to make the social safety net more cost-effective and less intrusive.

In 1971, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill introducing a watered-down version of NIT. It missed becoming law by only 10 votes in the Senate. The next year, presidential nominees from both major parties endorsed a variety of similar proposals: Richard Nixon supported the watered-down NIT, and George McGovern briefly proposed a genuine UBI. The similarity of the two nominees’ positions probably made BIG less of an issue in the campaign than it would have been if one of them had opposed it.

Although Nixon won the 1972 election, BIG never got another vote. It died partly because it had no groundswell of support outside the politically marginalized welfare rights movement. Its proponents in Congress made little effort to sell the proposal to the public at large. Many prominent guaranteed income supporters viewed Nixon’s version with skepticism, seeing it as too small with too many conditions to fit the model. In the absence of a wider movement for BIG, politicians paid little or no political cost for letting Nixon’s plan die and letting the idea fade from public discussion.

Although the second wave was most visible in the United States and Canada, the discussion spilled over into Europe, even as the second wave waned in North America. A high-level government report in France focused on NIT in 1973. At about the same time, James Meade and others managed to draw attention to the idea in the United Kingdom. In 1977, Politieke Pariji Radicalen, a small party in the Netherlands, became the first party with representation in parliament to endorse UBI. The next year, Niels I. Meyer’s book “Revolt from the Centre” launched a substantial wave of support in Denmark.

People often look back on the second wave of the BIG movement as a lost opportunity because no country introduced a full UBI or NIT, but the second wave had some major successes. The United States and Canada conducted the world’s first BIG implementation trials. The United States created or expanded several programs that can be seen as small steps in the direction of BIG, including food stamps, the EITC, and the Child Tax Credit. All these programs provide income supplements to low-income people. Although they have restrictions and conditions that UBI and NIT don’t, they represent steps toward BIG because they have fewer conditions than most traditional social policies and because they were proposed or expanded as compromise responses to the guaranteed income movement.

In 1982, the State of Alaska introduced the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). The PFD provides yearly dividends, varying usually between $1,000 and $2,000 per year to Alaska residents. Despite being very small, Alaska’s PFD is the closest program yet to meeting the Basic Income Earth Network ’s definition of UBI — falling short only by requiring people to fill out a form to verify that they meet the residency requirement.

Not only did these policies help a lot of people, but their success also provides evidence that can help to push social programs slowly in the direction of universality. But by the late 1970s and early 1980s, politicians such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher dramatically changed the conversation. They successfully vilified virtually all welfare recipients as frauds , no matter how well they might have satisfied programs’ need-based criteria. As a result, many people stopped talking about how to expand or improve the welfare system and started talking about whether and how much to cut it. In response, the left largely went on the defensive. Any suggestion that the existing system might be replaced by something better could at that time be seen as lending support to people who wanted to cut existing programs and replace them with nothing.

In 1980, the United States and Canada canceled the last of their implementation trials. Canada stopped analyzing the data that it had spent years and millions of dollars collecting. For the next 30 years, with a few notable exceptions, mainstream politics in most countries included virtually no discussion of BIG.

Between the Waves

The 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s were downtime for BIG in world politics, but there were significant exceptions, when proposals briefly gathered attention in one place or another. These exceptions and the growth of academic interest in UBI were extremely important to building what became the third wave of the BIG movement. In 1982, a British parliamentary committee considered a UBI proposal. National waves of support happened in the Netherlands, Denmark, and postapartheid South Africa at various times. But for the most part, discussion of UBI took place outside the political mainstream.

Proposals continued to come out in various circles, but they were more easily ignored in this period. For example, Leonard Greene, an aviation expert and successful entrepreneur, wrote two books and sponsored a demonstration project in which he gave a small UBI to several families, but he received little, if any, media response. When I had the pleasure of meeting him, he described his 10-year-old son’s reaction to UBI, “So what you’re saying is that income doesn’t have to start at zero.” I’ve used that phrase ever since.

As one 10-year-old put it, “So what you’re saying is that income doesn’t have to start at zero.”

One place the UBI discussion grew steadily in this period was in academic journals. In 1984, a group of Britons, led mostly by academics, formed the world’s first national UBI network, the Basic Income Research Group (now the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust ). In 1986, a group of academic researchers established a group that was initially called the Basic Income European Network (BIEN). Philippe Van Parijs (a Belgian philosopher) and Guy Standing (a British economist) were the most active leaders of BIEN for the first 20 or 25 years of its existence.

From the founding of BIEN to the present, UBI, rather than NIT, has dominated the BIG movement. However, in the last few years, the NIT model has come back. In some countries, the BIG discussion is dominated by NIT, usually under other names, such as guaranteed income.

The academic debate grew substantially between the mid-1980s and the 2000s, especially in the fields of politics, philosophy, and sociology. By the mid-2000s, national groups existed in at least two dozen countries, including the United States, where the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network had been established in December 1999. Because so many UBI networks around the world wanted BIEN affiliation, the network changed its name to Basic Income Earth Network in 2004. Yet UBI stayed mostly outside the political mainstream.

I became interested in UBI as a high school student in 1980, just as the second wave of discussion was dying down. I started writing about it professionally after finishing graduate school in 1996, when the idea seemed hopelessly out of the mainstream. For those of us taking part in UBI events in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it felt less like a movement and more like a discussion group.

Even the activist contingent within BIEN and other networks concentrated more on discussion than action, believing (probably correctly) that they had to increase public awareness before they could gather the critical mass of support needed to make political action viable. Isolation from mainstream politics distracted supporters from how much their movement was growing. But as supporters would learn in retrospect, they were helping to lay the groundwork for a takeoff.

The Third Wave

Interest in UBI has grown enormously since 2010. The discussion crossed over into the mainstream international media by the mid-2010s. In some places, the crossover began earlier. Those of us who were volunteering at BIEN’s Basic Income News service noticed a substantial increase in media attention in late 2011 and early 2012, and media attention has grown steadily since. It is impossible to attribute the third wave of the UBI movement to any single source. It is the confluence of many widely dispersed actions and events, which I will try to sketch here as well as I can.

The financial meltdown of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession, and the Arab Spring sparked a new climate of activism. Public attention turned to poverty, unemployment, and inequality. UBI supporters suddenly had a much more welcoming environment for activism.

By 2008, a national wave of UBI support had begun to swell in Germany. Prominent people from across the political spectrum all began to push different UBI proposals in very public ways. That year, UBI activists in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria attracted the critical mass necessary for effective UBI activism and jointly organized the first International Basic Income Week . This event has taken place every year since and has spread around the world, now including actions as far away as Australia and South America.

In 2008, the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition , funded mostly by private donations from the Lutheran Church, began a two-year pilot, giving a small Basic Income to every resident of a rural Namibian village. This project coincided with a smaller one in Brazil and was followed by a much larger one in India in 2010 (both also largely or entirely funded by private donations). These trials attracted substantial media attention both locally and internationally. They helped inspire the privately and publicly funded experiments later conducted around the world.

Just as the Indian experiment faded from the headlines, European activists introduced UBI to the European mainstream media by pushing two citizens’ initiatives, one in Switzerland and one in the European Union, both of which attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures. The EU initiative recruited across Europe and collected signatures from every EU member state. The Swiss initiative collected enough signatures to trigger a national vote, which was held in 2015. Although neither initiative ultimately passed, they both built an infrastructure for UBI activism across Europe and attracted enormous international media attention, which in turn sparked additional activity and attracted more support.

At about this time, journalists around the world started paying attention to UBI, greatly increasing its visibility. By 2015, a third wave was visible to people who were paying attention, and all subsequent activism for UBI owes something to the cumulative results of the actions up to that point.

However, the chain of activism building on activism was only one of many sources of growth in the UBI movement. One of the movement’s most important strengths is its diversity: Support comes from many different places and from people who do not usually work together, follow similar strategies, or adhere to similar ideologies.

By the time the UBI experiment was underway in Namibia, economists and sociologists had already begun reassessing the results of the 1970s NIT experiments in the United States and Canada, bringing renewed press attention to BIG and helping to spark new interest in the idea.

Another source of momentum for UBI came from developing countries that had been streamlining and easing the conditions of eligibility for redistributive programs by creating what are now known as conditional cash transfers (CCTs). Although these programs were conditional, the results from easing conditions were so positive that they significantly bolstered support for further steps toward UBI, not only in lesser-developed countries of the Global South but all around the world. At least one CCT program, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, inspired by the senator and UBI advocate Eduardo Suplicy, was introduced explicitly as a step toward UBI.

Support comes from many different places and from people who do not usually work together, follow similar strategies, or adhere to similar ideologies.

The third wave of the UBI movement is more identifiably left of center than the second wave, which involved many people who portrayed BIG as a compromise between left and right. But some right-of-center support has boosted the movement as well. For example, a group of philosophers and economists calling themselves Bleeding Heart Libertarians wrote a significant amount of pro-UBI literature in the 2010s.

Mirroring the futurism discourse of the 1960s, new attention to the automation of labor and the related precariousness of employment brought many new adherents to UBI. As unemployment reached new highs during the Great Recession and job openings lagged behind the overall economic recovery, many people, especially in high-tech industries in the United States, began to worry that the pace of automation was threatening large segments of the labor force with high unemployment, low wages, and gig-economy precariousness. Labor leaders, activists, academics, and tech entrepreneurs have all proposed UBI in response, making automation-related labor market changes one of the prime drivers of recent interest in UBI, especially in the United States. Some entrepreneurs, such as Chris Hughes of Facebook and the late Götz Werner of the German drugstore chain DM, have put their money where their mouth is, supporting UBI research, activism, and experimentation, giving an unquestionable boost to the movement.

Another way technology has affected the UBI debate is through cryptocurrencies (privately issued, all-electronic mediums of exchange). Some people see cryptocurrency as a way to bypass central banks entirely and provide users with a UBI in the newly created currency.

Environmentalism has also played a major role in the growth of interest in UBI. Two of the most popular proposals for combating climate change are the tax-and-dividend and cap-and-dividend strategies, both of which involve setting a price on carbon emissions and distributing the revenue to all citizens — thereby creating at least a small UBI. Some environmentalists see UBI as a way to counteract the depletion of resources by giving people a way out of the cycle of work and consumption. These kinds of proposals have received support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Growing interest in UBI, and to some extent tech industry money, have inspired a new round of UBI and UBI-related pilot projects in Finland, Kenya, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, and many other places. UBI experiments are both a product and a driver of the current wave of support for UBI. This new round is characterized mostly by many small experiments rather than the few large experiments of the 1970s. Part of the reason is that many of the contemporary experiments are privately financed and therefore have to work on more limited budgets.

One exception is GiveDirectly’s enormous project in Kenya . This nonprofit has raised enough funds to finance a UBI of 75 cents per day for 20,000 people for 12 years, in an area where many people live on a dollar per day or less. When complete, this study will be the largest and longest UBI experiment ever conducted.

Between 2017 and 2020, UBI support got a large boost from Andrew Yang’s campaign for president of the United States. He was the first major-party candidate to endorse UBI since 1972, and the first ever to make UBI the centerpiece of their platform. For a political outsider, Yang did extremely well, qualifying for debates and recruiting a large network of supporters. Partly inspired by Yang, many candidates for lower offices also endorsed UBI in 2020 and 2022.

U.S. activism for UBI took off in October 2019, when activists in New York organized a UBI march from Harlem to the South Bronx. Hundreds of people, including myself , participated in the New York march, while 30 cities around the world joined in with their own marches. The march was so successful that organizers decided to make it an annual event. The 2022 march took place on September 24 at the climax of Basic Income Week.

Just as Yang suspended his campaign in 2020, UBI got yet another boost from an unexpected source. The COVID-19 outbreak and the related economic meltdown gave impetus for a temporary, emergency UBI. Suddenly mainstream politicians across the world were discussing UBI.

UBI was particularly well suited to the COVID situation. It functions as a cushion for people who are unable to work either because of social distancing or because of the economic downturn, and at the very same time it functions as a bonus for the essential workers asked to remain on the job during a pandemic. In both ways, it helps reduce the severity of the recession by stimulating the economy from the bottom up. To some extent, these policies represented politicians catching up with activists who had been calling for quantitative easing for the people (rather than for bankers) since the start of the Great Recession in 2009.

As late as perhaps 2015, it remained unclear whether the third wave would match the size and reach of the second. By 2019, the answer was obvious: Grassroots support and international media attention are more extensive than ever. The third wave represents the first truly global wave of UBI support. The first two did not extend much beyond the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but the third wave involves major campaigns on all inhabited continents.

The Pattern

This look at the ups and downs of the UBI movement shows that UBI has tended to enter the mainstream conversation at times when people were concerned with and open to new approaches to address inequality, poverty, and unemployment. UBI has tended to recede from the mainstream conversation when public attention turned to other issues, or when other ways of addressing inequality became dominant. The first wave subsided when policymakers settled on the attempt to build a comprehensive welfare system on the conditional model. The second wave subsided (at least in the United States and Canada) not in the prosperous economy of the mid-1980s but in the troubling times of the late 1970s, when right-wing politicians convinced large numbers of people that redistributive programs should be cut instead of improved.

The biggest danger to the third wave appears to be growing nationalism. If nationalist politicians can convince enough voters to blame immigrants and foreign competition for growing inequality, they can effectively distract people from mobilizing around better social policies.

Karl Widerquist , a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar who specializes in distributive justice, is the author of “ Universal Basic Income ,” from which this article is excerpted.

This article draws heavily on Widerquist’s essay “ Three Waves of Basic Income Support ,” published in “The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income,” edited by Malcolm Torry.

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Home > USC Columbia > HONORS_COLLEGE > SENIOR_THESES > 587

Senior Theses

Free money: the feasibility of implementing a universal basic income in the united states.

Chase H. Dorn , University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow

Date of Award

Spring 2023

Degree Type

Moore School of Business

Director of Thesis

Dr. Christian Jensen

First Reader

Dr. Jason DeBacker

Second Reader

The objective of this thesis is to explore whether a universal basic income paid to all United States citizens is both economically possible and advantageous. A recent surge in popularity of the idea has led to a plethora of universal basic income experiments that have been or are being performed across the world, however there has yet to be a UBI implemented on a national level. Using data from these experiments and existing academic research into the policy, the first part of the thesis details the necessary components of a UBI, documents the history of the idea, notes the justifications for implementing the policy, and addresses related criticisms.

The second part of the thesis calculates a ballpark cost estimate of an aggressive universal basic income that would eliminate poverty almost completely. It utilizes a simplified method employed in earlier academic research as a basis for the cost equation before exploring five different hypothetical methods of funding such a program: repurposing of redundant welfare budgets, a value-added tax, wealth tax, corporate tax, and carbon tax. Using aggressive cost estimates and conservative funding estimates, the rudimentary calculation methods determine a UBI to be feasible for the United States. This thesis is intended to deconstruct the utopian and far-fetched label that UBI often receives, showing that considering this policy to be realistic is not quite as naïve as some might think.

Recommended Citation

Dorn, Chase H., "Free Money: The Feasibility of Implementing a Universal Basic Income in the United States" (2023). Senior Theses . 587. https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/senior_theses/587

© 2023, Chase H Dorn

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Home > STUDENTWORK > HONORS-THESIS > 69

Honors Thesis

The Effect of a Universal Basic Income on Life Decisions: Evidence from a Student Lab Experiment

Tyler Wenande , University of South Dakota

Date of Award

Spring 2019

Document Type

Department/major.

Political Science

First Advisor

Dr. Shane Nordyke

Second Advisor

Third advisor.

Universal Basic Income (UBI), Economic Lab Experiment

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is an unconditional cash transfer administered universally regardless of employment or economic status. A UBI, while typically thought of as a response to rising income inequality or threatening automation, has the potential to achieve a number of effects, only some of which are economic. And while a UBI could have positive effects, there are some critiques of UBI that warrant merit and will be examined in this paper after discussing the potential positive effects. An experiment was designed to test some of the theories promoted by UBI critics and proponents. Subjects, divided into two groups with the treatment group receiving a UBI, played an economic game where they made decisions about work and leisure, consumption, education, and savings. Subjects decisions were recorded and data was analyzed using OLS multivariate regressions to reveal results that generally align with real-world pilots. UBI recipients work less when they can use that time to achieve higher levels of education. When there is no opportunity for education, there was no statistically significant difference in the amount of time that subjects spent working. UBI recipients also had higher savings and consumption levels.

Recommended Citation

Wenande, Tyler, "The Effect of a Universal Basic Income on Life Decisions: Evidence from a Student Lab Experiment" (2019). Honors Thesis . 69. https://red.library.usd.edu/honors-thesis/69

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Stanford scholar explores pros, cons of ‘basic income’

Stanford historian Jennifer Burns said that while political challenges exist to implement a “universal basic income,” this type of measure would protect workers and families against the fluidity of today’s workplace and employment worlds.

Given the flux of American politics right now, an idea like “universal basic income” could gain political traction, a Stanford historian says.

Stanford scholar Jennifer Burns , a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate professor of history in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, says such a program could help protect workers who hit rock bottom in an age of technological disruption.

A basic income – also called basic income guarantee, universal basic income or basic living stipend – is a program in which citizens of a country receive a regular sum of money from the government. Tech leaders Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have floated the idea, and the city of Chicago is considering such a proposal as a way to reduce the disruptions of automation in the workforce.

Jennifer Burns, associate professor of history, says a universal basic income program could help protect workers who have hit rock bottom. (Image credit: Courtesy Jennifer Burns)

Burns researches and writes about 20th-century American intellectual, political, and cultural history and is currently writing a book about the economist Milton Friedman , who supported the idea of a universal income.

What would be the benefits of a universal basic income if it were to become a reality?

The most attractive aspect of universal basic income, or UBI, is that it can serve to underwrite market participation, in contrast to other welfare programs that essentially require people to not be employed to receive the benefit. Some programs even require participants to have essentially zero assets in order to qualify. In effect, the programs kick in when people have hit rock bottom, rather than trying to prevent them from getting there in the first place.

What are the best arguments against a universal basic income?

The best argument against UBI is feasibility. You may be surprised I do not mention cost. If one multiplies the popular figure for an annual UBI – typically $12,000 a year – by the population of the United States, you get an eye-popping figure of over $3 trillion. The figure varies depending on whether children are included and at what benefit level. However, if you set this against current taxes and transfers, and conceptualize the UBI as a benefit that can be taxed for higher earners, the costs come down significantly.

The real challenge is political. First, there is significant bias against unconditional transfer programs. Most welfare programs in the United States are tied in some way to employment; for example, think of Social Security. Building popular support for a program that breaks this connection between welfare and work will require political leadership of the highest order. And then there is the enormous hurdle of integrating a UBI with the extant institutional and bureaucratic structure of the federal state. For these reasons, we may see a UBI on the state level first.

What did Milton Friedman think of the idea of a universal basic income?

Although he didn’t call it a UBI, the idea of a minimum income was the earliest policy proposal Friedman came up with. In his papers, I was astounded to find his first proposal for what he called “a minimum standard of living” written in 1939. This is when he was completely unknown as an economist, although he was clearly already thinking big.  Eventually, he revised it into a proposal for a negative income tax, which was enacted through the earned income tax credit, or EITC, a policy still in place today. The EITC is considered a highly successful program, with well-documented benefits for children in particular. Scholars have also found it serves to increase workforce participation among recipients.

Although he has a reputation as a radical libertarian, Friedman believed there was a clear role for the state in society. In particular, he believed there would always be persons who could not compete effectively in a market economy. He also recognized the role of luck in life, even calling the memoir he wrote with his wife, Rose, Two Lucky People . Whether it was temporary assistance or long-term support, Friedman saw a place for welfare. But Friedman was a great believer in the power of choice. Rather than give poor people specific benefits – food stamps, for example – he favored giving people cash that they could then bring into the marketplace and use to exercise individual choice.

Wouldn’t people stop working if they got “free money”?

That’s another common response to the idea of UBI. In most scenarios, the grant would not be enough to forsake paid employment altogether. The idea is that when combined with paid income, a UBI would lift the living standard of even low-skilled, low-income workers. This is why the EITC has been so effective. However, families could pool grants, perhaps enabling several members to leave the workforce altogether. This possibility has proven a point of interest both to conservatives, who point out that current welfare programs often incentivize fathers to live apart from their children, and progressives who want to provide cash benefits to mothers and others providing family care.

Milton Friedman had an interesting take on this issue. William F. Buckley asked him if he wasn’t worried about people taking the money and neglecting their children, etc. Friedman responded: “If we give them the money, we will strengthen their responsibility.” He seemed to be making a point that more recent social science research has fleshed out. Poverty, scholars have found, actually makes it harder to be responsible, to plan, to think about the future. When you are focused on getting enough to eat, or making rent, you don’t have many psychological resources left over to focus on anything else. And, when you can’t pay a traffic fine or afford safe housing, all the other foundations of a good life like steady employment and getting your children an education can also be out of reach.

What does the future hold for universal basic income in the U.S.?

If the future of UBI can be gauged from media interest, its future is bright. Also, the idea has attracted an enormous number of high-level supporters. Particularly in Silicon Valley, it’s a genuine fad, attracting adherents from entrepreneurs and tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

There are two challenges ahead. The first is to spread the basic idea so that it continues to move from fringe to mainstream. The second is to build it into a workable policy with a political base. Given the fluidity of American politics right now, it could be the perfect moment for a policy that is at once utopian, bipartisan and deeply rooted in American thought.

Downloadable Content

Universal Basic Income

• Masters Thesis
• Pena, Jorge
• Glidden, Marc
• Trebow, Elizabeth
• Franklin, Maurice
• California State University, Northridge
• Public Sector Management and Leadership
• Dissertations, Academic -- CSUN -- Public Administration.
• homelesness
• food insecurity
• wage inequality
• http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/222100
• by Jorge Pena

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No strings attached: an argument for universal basic income.

Technology, globalization, and a rapidly changing economic landscape are leaving behind many workers and feeding the flames of populism worldwide. Could the solution to mitigating this economic displacement be to just give everyone money?

That’s the idea being pushed by advocates of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in recent books like Give People Money by Annie Lowrey and organizations like The Economic Security Project . A Universal Basic Income is a cash-benefit given to everyone — no strings attached — designed to alleviate financial burdens of the modern economy. The idea is simple, provocative, and slowly creeping into mainstream policy debates.

The biggest obstacle in successfully enacting a UBI is how high-income countries view work and the social safety net.

Across high-income countries, especially in the United States, our work is a part of our individual and national identity. Everyone’s answer to the question “what do you do ?” defines how we see ourselves. The earliest European settlers in America were Puritans and Quakers who believed idleness to be a sin. Upon visiting the United States during the 19th century, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed a unique industriousness and honor surrounding work in America.  Sociologist Max Weber’s concept of the “Protestant work ethic” additionally projected an ethos of societal value being equated with toil that is deeply embedded in our national fabric. When American politicians of any stripe talk about the struggles of a constituency, the group almost always has a modifier of “working.” In contrast to Europeans, Americans significantly believe that the poor can improve their lot with the right amount of effort.

Too often, what it means to “work” is narrowly defined as “market labor for wages” and is increasingly out of sync with the needs and dynamics of modern society. For example, as our population ages more people will spend their time taking care of parents and volunteering at senior centers, earning no wage but surely providing value to society. Eternal chores like housework and parenthood are also essential to existing but are not typically thought of as “work.”

Simon Kuznets, the economist behind measuring economic growth in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), always admitted the shortcomings of using GDP to measure the value of an entire economy specifically because it ignored household work. By focusing on GDP as an indicator of economic health, and therefore societal health, there continues to be a stigma against non-market labor. Child-rearing, elderly familial care, and household chores are ignored by these national statistics, implicitly valueless without an obvious market price. Those who give their time to community organizations or creative endeavors with insufficient market value are not given compensation that can be reflected on tax returns.

The existing safety nets across high-income countries are almost all based around the old-fashioned definition of work as labor that is valued by the market. Social security in the United States is close to a universal transfer system, but getting benefits requires working at least 40 quarters — 10 years — before retirement age. Taking care of kids at home for 30 years does not count. One must be earning a wage in the traditional labor market to qualify for social security benefits. Unemployment insurance, too, is only for people who were working for wages but find themselves suddenly without a paycheck because of layoffs.

The modern American safety net is ostensibly designed to be means-tested. This theoretically allows governments to target those most in need. Yet the ethos of rugged individualism and pulling one’s self up by one’s bootstraps underlies the American welfare system and requires burdensome proof of qualification to the point of shutting too many people out entirely. The architecture of the modern American welfare state has its beginnings in the New Deal, where cultural attitudes more common in the 1930s subtly linger today. Means-testing allows governments to be discretionary and, consciously or subconsciously, these allocations end up being racially skewed. Through various hoops and clauses, the Social Security Act passed in 1935 with enough initial conditions that it excluded two-thirds of black workers in the South from receiving benefits. Of the 3,000 loans guaranteed in Mississippi in 1947 by the Veteran Administration, only two went to black mortgage recipients.

The very myth of welfare queens and those who leech off the state have deep racial undertones. Programs designated to help low-income families and disproportionately used by blacks — though used more by whites in absolute terms — are labeled “welfare.” But government assistance embedded in the tax code that is overwhelmingly used by white families — like the mortgage interest deduction — is rarely thought of as a handout. Many of these beneficiaries, of course, do not see themselves as being recipients of a government handout.

Government assistance comes in a combination of state- and federally-funded programs. But the discretion left to certain states can explain a lot of the difference. Racial heterogeneity itself may be to blame for a lack of willingness to provide assistance to people of color. A seminal paper by Alberto Alesina et al found that “Within the United States, race is the single most important predictor of support for welfare. America’s troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state.” A state like Vermont (which is 95 percent white) covers 78 percent of its impoverished families, while in Louisiana (which is 32 percent black) only four percent of impoverished families are covered.

Despite the welfare queen caricature, every part of the American safety net is based around means-testing and/or age requirements and are almost never in perpetuity. There is no such thing as a general “welfare check” that anyone can just go to a government building and pick up. Programs like TANF — Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — give financial assistance to families that demonstrate need according to different states’ requirements. SNAP — Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, best known as “food stamps” — provides low-income households with vouchers that can be exchanged for certain categories of food. Even unemployment benefits are subject to their own conditions and have an explicit sunset date. These obstacles, whatever their intentions, are so prohibitive that it’s hard to defend perpetual poverty as the inevitable result of people just “falling through the cracks.” In 2015, just five percent of children living in poverty in Wyoming were covered by TANF.

Tying government assistance to incentives is not totally outlandish. There are instances where government benefits can be counter-productively generous to the point of disincentivizing work. But basing government assistance on conditionalities comes from a distorted view that poverty is usually a choice caused by bad decisions. If only we could give people better incentives, they’d be able to escape poverty. This idea is the impetus behind work requirements for government assistance and drug-testing beneficiaries. But requiring work for those who can’t find it is more likely to exclude those in need than provide a spark for the lazy. Imposing drug tests in exchange for food stamps isn’t going to snap a drug abuser out of his/her addiction and back onto a career trajectory. Women and racial minorities, who are discriminated against in the labor market, have even more difficulty finding employment and therefore accessing government assistance. And what about the people who cannot work because of disabilities, or whose time needs to be spent taking care of elderly parents or young children?

There is no settled UBI policy in the political discourse but all proposals share the same foundation. A UBI is Universal: every citizen takes part, regardless of need or age. Universality ensures that the program does not develop resentment effects and does not disincentivize work by disappearing when a recipient goes above a certain income threshold. There is no paperwork needed to prove you’re unemployed or too poor. Universality ensures it runs smoothly; experience shows programs targeted towards the poor like Medicaid operate far less efficiently than near-universal programs like Social Security and Medicare. A UBI is Basic: it is meant to be a cushion against times of financial duress and supplement other income to liberate people who do nonwage labor or want a cushion alongside entrepreneurial endeavors. A UBI is income: it is not a voucher that you can exchange only for eligible food items. It is not payment assistance for housing. Every recipient spends in the way he or she deems is best. A UBI takes the discretion away from the government and gives it to every individual, decreasing the bias of the existing system and eliminating the prohibitive bureaucratic nightmares that prevent more extensive coverage.

It’s difficult to know exactly how a massive redefinition of our national safety net would look, but there’s encouraging evidence already found within the United States.

The Alaska Permanent Fund gives up to $2,000 dollars a year to each Alaskan citizen, essentially as a dividend of oil revenues. The program lifts three percent of the state’s population out of poverty every year. A striking takeaway from the state’s project is how much the universality gives a sense of togetherness that other government transfer schemes do not. Alaskans feel like they are all a part of their state’s success, and no one resents a fellow citizen getting the check. A UBI in America could instill a sense that every citizen is a part of the country’s success, regardless of his or her income.

Internationally, Iran enacted a UBI scheme in 2010 by replacing previous food and energy subsidies with cash transfers. Data from the Economic Research Forum found that the policy change reduced poverty and inequality while preventing a feared mass exodus from the labor market.

These instances point to positive results for cash transfers and, perhaps most importantly, debunk the idea that it will incentivize people to stop working. Evidence throughout studies from low- and high-income countries consistently suggest most people who leave the labor market do so for beneficial reasons like furthering education or taking care of family members. The strong connection between working and self-worth remains even when we’re given money.

Evidence from high-income and low-income countries also disproves one of the most common points of skepticism about UBI: the concern that people will squander their allotment on indulgent consumption. Inevitably some money will go towards less-essential items, but it’s clear that what most of those in poverty need is a financial boost, not a realignment and paternalistic dictation of their economic decision-making.

A UBI is no panacea for the woes of the modern displaced worker. A cash transfer will not alleviate the pains of rust belt workers unable to fill the meaningful void left by lost employment. Instead, UBI should be seen as a cushion for the massive economic disruptions from the digital revolution, disruptions that we have previously only seen during the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

The prospect of a UBI is not as farfetched as it seems. Hillary Clinton was close to adding a basic income policy into her 2016 Presidential platform but ultimately “decided it was exciting but not realistic.” Democratic candidates for 2020, like Kamala Harris and Chris Murphy, have expressed openness to the idea. The success of state-by-state marijuana decriminalization proves that smaller state-based UBI experiments could eventually lead to a more convincing national campaign.

People from across the political spectrum can find something to like in UBI, albeit with differences in its enactment.  For economic conservatives, the attractiveness of the UBI would be its ability to replace much of the clunky bureaucratic features of the American welfare state. For economic liberals, UBI would not replace the existing welfare state but instead complement it. These are not trivial details to work out: It means that UBI could range from adding nothing to the Federal budget to adding $3 trillion . But before a greater UBI context is considered, the essential task is to convince the public that unconditional cash transfers for every citizen are feasible and beneficial. Redefining society’s view of what “work” is and what it means to contribute to society is no easy feat. Yet we are beginning to be engulfed by the seismic winds of societal and economic change from a globalized digital age. We need a paradigmatic shift in how we view these things in order to ensure a broad-based peaceful prosperity for the future.

Universal Basic Income and Consumption Essay

The issues related to inequality and economic disparities always have topical for human civilization. The uneven distribution of wealth has become the central theme of endless conflicts around the globe. In fact, economic inequality can be considered to be the primary factor of the class stratification of society. In order to address the problem, prominent economists, politicians, experts, and activists have proposed an array of solutions. In recent years, the notion of universal basic income (UBI) has acquired particular importance. The idea of providing each household with a certain amount of money has been actively discussed as a means of eradicating poverty and inequality. The idea’s proponents claim that the UBI is an effective instrument, which would enable a better quality of life for hundreds of millions of people. Nevertheless, such propositions tend to disregard the economic impact of the universal basic income. Instead, it has the potential to increase the degree of uncertainty in the already complicated environment. This essay argues that the implementation of the UBI will not alleviate the issue of income disparities, reviewing it from a purely economic perspective.

In its general understanding, the idea of universal basic income is presented in a similar manner across various contexts. According to the concept, each person should be entitled to a specific amount of income on unconditional terms. The exact amount of funds is to be determined individually for each particular nation. Ideally, it should exceed the basic sustenance level, thus allowing people to have a broader range of needs covered. Proponents assume that the UBI is bound to alleviate the stress experienced by those who are forced to take unpleasant jobs for the sake of survival. Simon Lewis dedicated a considerable portion of his opinion-based article to universal basic income. The author lists the UBI among the key aspects of a well-functioning society of the future. Lewis states that the implementation of this idea is expected to increase people’s quality of life and reduce global consumption levels by a significant margin. This forecast is based on the idea that the current elevated level of consumption is conditioned by the pursuit of reward after hard work.

Nevertheless, it appears possible to view the discussed matter from a different perspective, which would dictate an entirely different outcome. First of all, the envisaged reduction of consumption levels appears to contradict current trends. The rise of consumerism has been observed across nations, and the tendency remains strong in the 2020s. Today’s industries develop at an unprecedentedly rapid pace, presenting new benefits of modern civilization more quickly than ever. Consequently, consumers are eager to purchase and test the new advancements, which often happens at the expense of more relevant elements of sustenance (Campbell 2018). Evidently, the demands and desires of society constantly evolve, and the introduction of the UBI will resolve the issue. If universal income is provided, the demand-conditioned aspects of the market are only going to increase, thus prompting industries to respond by an elevated supply. For example, if a person receives an additional $1000 per month, the current trends suggest that they will be more likely to spend it on various means of entertainment rather than more basic needs. Changing the patterns of consumption is a major objective, but it would require a profound shift of global mentality.

Furthermore, the idea of a universal basic income deserves additional research in terms of its macroeconomic impact. As established above, the idea of the UBI is unlikely to instigate short-to-mid-term positive results on a scale of individual consumer behavior. However, it is equally projected to have major repercussions for the global economy. In the 21 st century, the vast majority of developed nations rely on capitalist principles. Within this framework, purchasing power plays a crucial role in determining the state of the market in terms of supply, demand, production, and prices. In other words, the value and the cost of a specific product or service are determined by its necessity and the number of consumers who can afford it. In this regard, the UBI ventures beyond the principles of the modern economy (Hoynes and Rothstein 933). If each household receives a specific, fixed sum on an unconditional basis, the default level of wealth will simply move from zero to the UBI amount. Consequently, the market will react to the innovation, adjusting its key parameters in kind. In the end, the expenses will increase proportionally to the current state through inflation.

The idea of the universal basic income, as it is, demonstrates a broad array of variables, which are often ignored by its proponents. In his article, Simon Lewis argues that the implementation of the UBI will be a major step toward an equal society. According to these ideas, less financially secure people will be able to provide themselves with basic needs while having a portion of their budgets left for other purposes. However, this presentation of the idea does not necessarily eliminate the idea of economic disparity. Fouksman and Klein write that the questions of power and class relations remain the most serious impediments to the UBI. The situation will not dramatically change, as wealthy people will receive the basic amount, as well. If there are to be specific criteria, excluding certain groups from the UBI framework, it will contradict the very basis of the notion. The UBI is supposed to be universal, and imposing limitations will revert the concept toward the territory of welfare. In this case, the initiative will face similar issues as welfare distribution in the context of systemic discrimination and power abuse.

The universal basic income represents an area of intense interest for researchers and the public, in general, due to its perceived potential in terms of resolving profound economic issues. The idea of the UBI has attracted many proponents who continue to promote it as the key to a prosperous future. The concept implies that each citizen is to receive a guaranteed payment on a universal basis, meaning that less fortunate social groups can enjoy financial security and better quality of life. In reality, the UBI is far from being an inherently positive phenomenon for a variety of reasons. First of all, additional funds are unlikely to cause a major change in terms of consumer behavior patterns. This process is projected to be long and difficult, only being attainable through profound education in the area of financial literacy and environmental awareness. In addition, the UBI has the potential to disrupt the fundamental economic concepts upon which capitalist societies are based. Overall, it is possible to conclude that the idea of universal basic income in its current state is far from optimal, as its practical disadvantages outweigh the perceived benefits.

Works Cited

Campbell, Colin. The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Fouksman, E. and E. Klein. “Radical Transformation or Technological Intervention? Two Paths for Universal Basic Income.” World Development , vol. 122, 2019, pp. 492-500.

Hoynes, Hillary and Jesse Rothstein. “Universal Basic Income in the United States and Advanced Countries.” Annual Review of Economics , vol. 11, 2019, pp. 929-958.

Lewis, Simon. “Four steps this Earth Day to avert environmental catastrophe.” The Guardian, 2021. Web.

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PROTOCOL: Effects of guaranteed basic income interventions on poverty‐related outcomes in high‐income countries: A systematic review

Anita rizvi.

1 School of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Canada

Vivian Welch

2 Methods Centre, Bruyère Research Institute, Ottawa Canada

Marcia Gibson

3 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow UK

Patrick R. Labelle

4 Library, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Canada

Christina Pollard

5 School of Population Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Bentley Australia

George A. Wells

6 School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Canada

Elizabeth Kristjansson

Associated data.

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows: to appraise and synthesize the available quantitative evidence on GBI interventions in high‐income countries, for the purpose of comparing the relative effectiveness of specific forms of GBI for alleviating poverty.

1. BACKGROUND

1.1. the problem, condition, or issue, 1.1.1. poverty in high‐income countries.

Although the concept of poverty in high‐income countries seems like a contradiction in terms, there are nonetheless many people in these countries who rely on social assistance benefits, subsidized housing, donated clothing, and food banks to make ends meet. The incongruity of experiencing poverty in countries that are considered to be wealthy can be explained in part by the definition of a high‐income country: one that has a gross national income (GNI) per capita of US$12,696 or more (World Bank,  2022 ). Since the per capita amount is calculated by dividing the gross national income by the country's population, it doesn't provide any information on the distribution of the income within the population or indicate how many of its citizens are unable to afford a basic standard of living.

While it is expected that some people in the free‐market economies of high‐income countries will earn more money than others, income inequality has increased in most developed countries since 1990 (United Nations,  2020 ). Also, the proportion of the population in the middle‐income class (having 75%–200% of the national median household income) has declined since the mid‐1980s in most developed countries, while the size of the lower‐income class (below 75% of the national median household income) has grown in most (OECD,  2019 ). In contrast, due to strong economic growth in developing countries in the last two decades, the size of the global middle class has nearly doubled or tripled in that time, depending on the measure used (Versace,  2021 ). One factor in these divergent trends between higher‐income and lower‐income countries is the outsourcing of manufacturing by developed countries in recent decades, combined with technological advancement that has displaced routine‐based jobs, while increasing computing power and artificial intelligence is also placing non‐routine jobs at risk (OECD,  2021a ).

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 22% of people in developed countries (more than 300 million) were considered poor in 2012, with an income of less than 60% of the national median—and since then, various indicators have shown poverty rates to be either unchanged or, in the case of the European Union (EU), trend higher after the 2008 global financial crisis (ILO,  2016 ). Based on the poverty threshold of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD), which is 50% of the national household median income, the poverty rates in developed countries have remained fairly stable between 2008 and 2019, ranging from 5.6% in Czechia (Czech Republic) to 18% in the United States (OECD,  2022 ). This data also shows the poverty rate for children (0–17 years old) in the United States and Spain to be the highest among developed countries, at 21%. (It should be noted that all the figures above refer to relative poverty, based on median incomes in these countries, and not to absolute poverty which is associated with problems such as malnutrition, unsafe drinking water, and lack of basic education; Peer,  2021 ).

Considering the basic material needs of food and shelter can also shed light on the prevalence of poverty, and these needs are unmet—either temporarily or chronically—for many people in high‐income countries. Because homelessness involves complex underlying factors besides not being able to afford housing, such as addictions, abusive relationships, and mental illness, this experience of poverty is outside the scope of this review, but has been addressed in others (e.g., Aubry,  2020 ; Nilsson,  2019 ). Inadequate access to food, on the other hand, is directly related to financial means in high‐income countries, as reflected in commonly used definitions of food insecurity: “a lack of available financial resources for food at the household level” (Hunger & Health,  2022 ), “[not] having physical and economic access to sufficient healthy food at all times” (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs,  2021 ), and “the inadequate or insecure access to food because of financial constraints” (Tarasuk & Mitchell,  2020 ).

Over the past five decades, there has been a proliferation of food banks (“food pantries” in the United States) in all high‐income countries; however, because of their dependence on charitable donations, food banks are limited in their capacity to alleviate food insecurity (Loopstra,  2018 ). The prevalence of food banks in high‐income countries is an important factor in relation to poverty because the people who rely on food banks for assistance are typically in the most food‐insecure categories (moderately or severely food‐insecure) and have lower incomes than food‐insecure people who do not rely on food banks (Tarasuk,  2020 ).

1.1.2. Policies and programs for reducing poverty

Social justice advocates have long asserted that poverty reduction is a moral obligation of the state which can be achieved by a fairer distribution of wealth (Barder,  2009 ; Standing,  2019 ). Although various types of support have been provided by the state to people in poverty since ancient times, the modern concept of social welfare emerged in the late 19th century in Germany under Chancellor von Bismarck, based on the precept that people facing poverty and distress should receive assistance from the state, not as a matter of charity but as a right (Rose,  1985 ). Other high‐income countries followed suit during the 20th century, implementing social assistance programs to alleviate poverty after the Great Depression (Trattner,  2007 ). In the United Kingdom during the Second World War, economist Sir William Beveridge wrote a report for the government which called for a “revolution” in the direction of Britain's welfare state and laid out a comprehensive set of social assistance programs, ranging from child benefits to pensions and funeral allowances. The Beveridge Report expanded on programs introduced by Lloyd George and Churchill three decades earlier and provided the blueprint for modern welfare in the United Kingdom (Day,  2017 ; Wheeler,  2015 ). Similarly, the Marsh Report of 1943 provided the foundation for the current social security system in Canada, by proposing measures similar to Beveridge's (a mentor of Marsh) and adding elements such as an employment program and health care insurance (Policy Options,  2004 ).

The cost of social assistance programs in high‐income countries is equivalent to between 12% and 31% of the gross domestic product (GDP), depending on the country (OECD,  2020 ). The generosity of social assistance also varies over time, with cutbacks being common during economic recessions due to politicians being pressured to support workers not “shirkers” (Romano,  2015 ).

Social welfare programs were found to reduce poverty significantly in high‐income countries between 1960 and 1991 (Kenworthy,  1999 ). Since then, however, welfare reforms—often called “workfare” because of their emphasis on transitioning social assistance recipients into the workforce—have been blamed by critics for reversing the poverty reduction trend by cutting benefits to the unemployed, including single mothers, and requiring them to accept precarious, low‐paying jobs (Carey & Bell,  2020 ; Widerquist et al.,  2013 ). The increased conditionality of workfare may also result in additional stigma and shame for recipients who either remain unemployed, or those who are skilled and placed in menial, low‐paying jobs (Carey & Bell,  2020 ; Widerquist,  2013 ). Sanctions in the form of benefit cuts and interruptions are intended to increase compliance with the conditions of workfare programs (e.g., actively seeking work), but some studies have suggested that these sanctions can have detrimental effects on mental and physical health, debt, material hardship, and financial stress (Pattaro,  2022 ).

Because social assistance programs rely on a minimum income threshold to determine eligibility, transitioning to a low‐paying job with an income slightly above the threshold results in losing the benefit. Additionally, it may also mean losing in‐kind benefits such as a rent subsidy and dental care, so a person's net income may end up being even lower than the amount provided by social assistance (Wolfson,  2018 ).

A distinguishing feature of social assistance in many high‐income countries is the availability of various programs, offered by different levels of government and targeted at specific groups (e.g., people with disabilities, women with infant children) and specific needs (e.g., money for food or rent). This approach has been criticized as being a patchwork of programs that are confusing in terms of understanding eligibility criteria, and which fail to provide some categories of people with a subsistence‐level income (Koebel & Pohler,  2019 ; Wolfson,  2018 ). The complexity of the programs and uncertainty regarding eligibility also translates into high levels of non‐take‐up, which results in many people missing out on benefits that they are eligible to receive. Although non‐take‐up results in short‐term savings for the government, it may result in more costly downstream effects if it prevents people from affording early medical treatment or paying for a better education for their children (Van Mechelen & Janssens,  2017 ).

The United Kingdom introduced a welfare reform called Universal Credit (UC) in 2012, which consolidates six previously separate programs (Winchester,  2021 ). To be eligible for UC, most recipients who are unemployed (except those with infant children) have to seek work or take training courses, and noncompliance such as missing an appointment with a work coach can lead to sanctions (UK Government,  2014 ). Some studies also suggest that the reforms of UC have led to an increase in poverty for single mothers (Carey & Bell,  2020 ).

One type of supplementary social assistance offered in many high‐income countries is in the form of refundable (or payable) tax credits, which provide cash benefits to eligible people with low incomes who file income tax returns. However, this form of income supplement has been criticized as being insufficient, especially for people with low incomes and without children (Koebel & Pohler,  2019 ). In the United Kingdom, only two types of refundable tax credits are currently offered: a working tax credit and a child tax credit (UK Government,  2022 ), so unemployed people without dependent children are not eligible for either. Also, refundable/payable tax credits only reach those who file income tax returns, and the rate of non‐filing is as high as 20% among people with very low incomes (Robson & Schwartz,  2020 ).

1.1.3. Universal basic income (UBI)

UBI has been proposed as a way to alleviate poverty (Hasdell,  2020 ) and to replace the current assortments of social assistance programs in high‐income countries, administered by different levels of government, which have been described as bureaucratic, costly, and stigmatizing (Koebel & Pohler,  2019 ; Reed & Lansley,  2016 ). UBI is “an income paid by a political community to all its members on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement” (Van Parijs,  2004 , p. 8). More recently, additional dimensions of UBI have been specified: it is paid at regular intervals and as cash payments which recipients can spend in any way they choose (BIEN,  2020 ). The amount of the UBI payment should also be stable and predictable (Standing,  2021 ).

Proponents of UBI have criticized the reformed welfare programs of the past three decades as being fiscally unsustainable, overly intrusive, and inhibiting the agency of benefit recipients (Orrell,  2021 ). In terms of public opinion, a study in the United Kingdom and the United States found that the two main reasons cited in support of UBI were simplicity and efficiency of administration, and reducing stress and anxiety (Nettle et al.,  2021 ).

Other important implications for UBI pertain to inequalities across socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and gender. Stressors such as financial difficulties, caring for disabled children or parents, and abusive relationships at work or home have damaging effects on mental and physical health, and these effects disproportionally impact women, racial/ethnic minorities, and people with low incomes (Thoits,  2010 ).

For women, UBI paid on an individual basis could potentially improve several areas of concern. Firstly, UBI would provide an income for women who perform work outside the formal labor market, such as caring for children and doing volunteer work, as well as for those who have personal care jobs which usually do not pay well. An individual‐level UBI would also reduce the financial dependency of spouses in abusive households, who currently are not eligible for social assistance if their spouse earns an income above the eligibility threshold (Bidadanure et al.,  2018 ).

Poverty rates in high‐income countries are disproportionally high for black and Indigenous people as well as for other racial and ethnic minorities, often resulting from involuntary unemployment due to discrimination and lack of opportunities. UBI has been proposed since the 1960s by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panther Party, and other advocates as a way to alleviate poverty due to systemic racism. Although UBI could potentially reduce income inequality along racial lines, there has not been much recent policy discussion on this topic (Bidadanure,  2019 ).

UBI is, however, receiving renewed attention due to rising income inequality and the changing nature of work due to automation and reductions in the quantity and quality of jobs (Gentilini,  2020 ; Hasdell,  2020 ). More recently, the economic disruptions brought about by the COVID‐19 pandemic have further prompted policy discussions on full‐scale UBI programs. On the other hand, the concept of UBI is also controversial and has been criticized for disincentivizing work and for being extremely costly, to the point that it could result in cuts to healthcare and education (Centre for Social Justice,  2018 ; Hoynes & Rothstein,  2019 ).

1.1.4. Measuring poverty

Regardless of the type of poverty reduction approach that is implemented, a major challenge is evaluating the effectiveness of the approach. This is because a standardized method does not exist for measuring poverty—indeed, there has been considerable debate over which poverty indicators are most accurate and reliable (Cutillo,  2020 ; Meyer & Sullivan,  2012 ). Official poverty measures have traditionally been based on income, setting some minimum threshold as the poverty line, while newer poverty measures factor in the cost of living, or at least the cost of basic needs (Cutillo,  2020 ; Guio,  2016 ; Meyer & Sullivan,  2012 ). Simple income‐based measures are still commonly used and have been criticized as being outdated and that they measure income inequality, not poverty (Gupta & Theoharis,  2020 ; Konle‐Seidl,  2021 ). The Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, for example, defines the poverty line as “half the median household income of the total population” in each country (OECD,  2021b ). Because of the arbitrary poverty threshold of such measures, millions of people slightly above the poverty line live precariously—“just a $400 emergency away from poverty” (Gupta & Theoharis,  2020 ).

Consumption‐based measures, which use surveys to assess what goods and services individuals or households consume, have been proposed as a more accurate indicator of poverty. A comparison of various poverty measures in Europe found that consumption‐based poverty measures identified different groups as being poor, compared to income‐based measures, and that income had a low correlation with severe material deprivation (Cutillo,  2020 ). Similarly, a comparison of poverty measures in the United States, including the official poverty measure (OPM), found that a consumption‐based measure was more accurate in identifying people who were facing financial hardship—that is, low consumption was a better indicator than low income (Meyer & Sullivan,  2012 ). Consumption‐based measures can also identify those with incomes above the official poverty line, but who spend a large amount on health‐related expenses, which may cause difficulty in affording food and rent (Sarabia,  2016 ).

The inaccuracy of income‐based poverty measures, even when the cost of living is factored in, can be demonstrated by non‐monetary indicators of poverty. For example, in Canada the new‐for‐2016 official poverty measure, the Market Basket Measure (MBM), indicates that the percentage of Canadians living below the poverty line decreased considerably, from 15.0% in 2012% to 10.1% in 2019. Over almost the same period, however, the prevalence of food insecurity increased slightly, from 8.3% of households in 2011–2012 to 8.7% in 2017–2018 (Statistics Canada,  2021 ). As well, the number of people aged 65 and older who visited food banks because they did not have enough money for food increased by 29.8% between 2016 and 2019 (Food Banks Canada,  2019 ). Official poverty measures also may not capture the impacts of food poverty on children, for whom food insecurity is not only associated with hunger and inadequate nutrition, but also with social, developmental, and health impacts that may persist into adulthood (Ramsey,  2011 ; Thomas,  2019 ).

Food insecurity has been proposed as a more accurate and sensitive indicator of poverty than measures based on income and estimates of the cost of living (Loopstra & Tarasuk,  2013 ; Power,  2016 ). Loopstra and Tarasuk observed a linear relationship between the severity of food insecurity and the odds of experiencing hardships such as not being able to pay rent and bills on time.

To examine the relationships of various types of material deprivation, Toppenberg (Toppenberg,  2017 ) constructed regression models using data from the US Census Bureau's 2015 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, and found that compromised health, education, standard of living, and housing were all better predictors of food insecurity than low income.

Recently, there has been increasing attention in the social sciences and policy research on the multi‐dimensional nature of poverty, which includes income poverty and material deprivation, as well as the psychological dimension of subjective financial stress (Schenck‐Fontaine & Panico,  2019 ). Other less tangible aspects of poverty, which income and consumption measures are not able to capture, are deficits in the areas of “voice, human security, isolation, dignity, lack of time, and subjective wellbeing” (Poverty Analysis Discussion Group,  2012 ; p. 5).

Interestingly, multidimensional poverty indices have been adopted in many developing countries as official poverty measures, incorporating the dimensions mentioned above, as well as: basic services, environment, personal safety from violence, and social inclusion (ITWG  2021 ). Non‐governmental bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have also developed multidimensional poverty measures, as has the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to assess poverty of children (SDSN,  2019 ).

The European Union (EU) adopted a new official poverty measure in 2010 which is described as multidimensional (SDSN,  2019 ; Whelan,  2014 ); however, it only includes three indicators: relative income (60% of the national median), employment, and material deprivation.

In this review, we will examine basic income interventions for reducing poverty, assessed using traditional income‐based poverty measures as well as alternative and novel measures—based on food insecurity, consumption, material deprivation, subjective financial stress, and other physical, social, and psychological dimensions of poverty that are reported in studies—to assess and compare the effectiveness of different variants of a guaranteed basic income.

1.2. The intervention

A truly universal basic income policy has never been implemented in high‐income countries (Gentilini,  2020 ; Gibson,  2020 ). Thus, our review will examine basic income interventions which include some features of UBI, as described below. These quasi‐UBI approaches are known by various terms such as: basic income guarantee (BIG), guaranteed annual income (GAI), unconditional cash transfer (UCT), and negative income tax (NIT). All of these variations share the common attribute of monetary benefits that would be guaranteed by the state (Van Parijs & Vanderborght,  2017 ), so we will use the term “guaranteed basic income” (GBI) in this review to cover all types of basic income interventions. The shorter term “basic income” is often used in the literature as a short form of “universal basic income”; therefore, we will use the term “guaranteed basic income” (GBI) to avoid confusion. For the meaning of basic, we will use the two interpretations outlined by Hoynes and Rothstein (Hoynes & Rothstein,  2019 ): (1) an amount sufficient to pay for one's basic needs, or (2) an amount given to each recipient that provides a base which can be supplemented by other forms of income.

We will also define the ‘regular’ and ‘predictable’ payment criteria of GBI as being paid at least once per year and in the same amount each time. Although these are not always considered core criteria of a basic income, we consider predictable, regular payments of a fixed amount to be essential if GBI is used as an intervention to reduce poverty. Not knowing if the next payment will cover the same expenses as the previous one may cause anxiety and apprehension for the recipient, which could aggravate the experience of poverty. Because some programs, described as a type of basic income, are based on dividends which can change in amount over time (e.g., from oil or casino revenues), we will include only those studies in which the amount received varies by less than 10% during the study period (i.e., the lowest amount received by each recipient must be at least 90% of the highest amount received).

One form of GBI is a negative income tax (NIT), whereby people whose income is below their tax liability threshold would receive an amount from the government based on a prescribed tax rate. For example, if a person's employment income was $20,000 per year and they would have to pay tax on income over $30,000, then the $10,000 difference would be subject to a “negative tax” such that the government would pay some amount of money to this person. If the tax rate was 50%, this person would receive $5000 per year as the NIT benefit, resulting in a total income of $25,000. If on the other hand, the person had no income at all, the NIT benefit would be $15,000, so the person's total income would never fall below this amount and additional income would be subject to the NIT tax rate. In contrast, welfare benefits are cut dollar for dollar if the recipient earns more income, so there is less incentive for recipients to seek low‐paying jobs.

Some other forms of GBI also have a “take‐back” condition in the intervention whereby the benefit is reduced at a known, prescribed rate when there is additional income from employment or other sources; however, the benefit must include a minimum guaranteed amount that is paid unconditionally (i.e., not affected by changes in income or employment status). This guaranteed amount will serve to differentiate studies of GBI included in this review from those of existing social assistance programs, including those with “soft” (minimal) eligibility criteria.

In summary, we will include interventions that meet the following criteria: (1) regular payment intervals, (2) paid in cash (not in‐kind), (3) a guaranteed minimum amount received unconditionally, and (4) fixed (within 10%) or predictable amounts.

1.2.1. A note on means testing

In this review, we distinguish between means testing that is used to determine eligibility for social assistance programs, versus means testing that is used to recruit participants for a GBI program, pilot, or experiment. For social assistance, means testing is conducted on an ongoing basis, to monitor eligibility and to adjust the amount of the benefit if required (e.g., reducing the benefit amount if employment income increases). We will include studies of GBI interventions if participants are enrolled based on low income, unemployment, or other means‐related factors, but not if the amount of the benefit is adjusted periodically based on those factors, with a dollar‐for‐dollar withdrawal rate in the benefit amount, as this would be similar to how conventional social assistance programs are administered. Similarly, we will exclude studies of interventions that involve ongoing means testing to reassess eligibility based on changes in the participants’ financial circumstances.

1.3. How the intervention might work

Proponents of GBI suggest that it is a preferable way to relieve poverty than conventional welfare programs for several reasons:

• 1. GBI would avoid the stigmatization inherent in conditional, means‐tested programs by offering the benefit to everyone within a community or at least everyone below a certain income threshold (Gentilini et al.,  2020 ; Jenkins,  2019 ).
• 2. The means testing of applicants and scrutiny of recipients in welfare programs is labor‐intensive to conduct; these procedures are not necessary with GBI. Thus, it would be a more efficient method of poverty reduction (Widerquist et al.,  2013 ; Yang et al.,  2021 ).
• 3. GBI is a matter of social justice which addresses growing income inequality and fosters a fairer sharing of the public wealth accumulated over successive generations (Gentilini et al.,  2020 ; Standing,  2021 ).

One drawback of welfare programs is that not everyone who is eligible ends up receiving the benefit. Many people do not apply for assistance because of the stigma and shame associated with welfare, while others may not realize they are eligible because of the complex requirements and procedures for enrollment (Bidadanure,  2019 ; Gentilini et al.,  2020 ). Alternatively, because government programs are often targeted toward specific populations (e.g., families with children), some people do not qualify for assistance (Koebel & Pohler,  2019 ). Because everyone in the community would be eligible for GBI, or those people under some income threshold, these problems would be avoided, as everyone with a low income would be able to receive the benefit.

As noted above, analyses of poverty measures based on income have found that they may not be accurate indicators of poverty. Part of the reason for this could be that these measures are based on aggregated data and do not consider individual circumstances ‐ for example, people who are unemployed but living in affluent households would be grouped in the extremely poor category, based on their income. On the other hand, some people may have incurred large debts in the past which still cause financial hardship, but they wouldn't be counted as poor if they had incomes above the official poverty line. As pointed out by Meyer and Sullivan (Meyer & Sullivan,  2012 , p. 116), “income‐based measures […] will not capture differences over time or across households in wealth accumulation, ownership of durable goods such as houses and cars, or access to credit.” As such, this review will examine studies of GBI interventions that use alternative measures, as described above, to assess their effectiveness for poverty reduction.

Food security was one outcome in a study of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP) in Canada in 2018–2019, which provided a payment to recipients equal to 75% of the official poverty line, more generous than existing social assistance amounts. Over two thirds of the respondents in the study reported that their diet had improved, they skipped meals less often, ate more nutritious food, and accessed food banks less often (McDowell & Ferdosi,  2021 ).

The B‐MINCOME project in Barcelona targeted 1000 low‐income households (plus 383 households in the control group) from 2017 to 2019. This project involved various intervention arms, some of which meet our GBI criteria for inclusion in this review. All households received a guaranteed minimum income to cover basic living expenses, and 531 were also involved in one of four “active policies”: training and employment, social entrepreneurship, housing subsidies, and community participation. There were also four modalities of participation: (a) compulsory participation in one of the active policies, (b) participation not compulsory, (c) benefit amount is reduced if there is other, additional income, and (d) benefit amount not reduced with additional income. The study found statistically significant reductions in food insecurity for all the intervention types, particularly when the benefit was conditional on participation in an active policy or when the benefit wasn't reduced if there was additional income. There were also statistically significant reductions in material deprivation (a consumption‐based measure) for all intervention types except when participation in an active policy was compulsory (Laín,  2019 ).

1.4. Why it is important to do this review

We found the following reviews that included GBI‐like interventions in high‐income countries, including one review of other reviews:

• Hasdell (Hasdell,  2020 ) conducted a synthesis of reviews, published between 2011 and 2020, of interventions globally that included at least two features of UBI. Three reviews for low‐ and middle‐income countries were included that reported on food insecurity or material deprivation.
• Gentilini et al. (Gentilini,  2020 ) produced a guide published by the World Bank that examined interventions similar to UBI globally and included one study in Sub‐Saharan Africa that reported on food security. Effects on poverty were assessed using two measures which are based on income alone: the poverty headcount and the squared poverty gap.
• Gibson et al. (Gibson,  2020 ) conducted a scoping review of interventions similar to basic income in upper‐middle‐income and high‐income countries, which examined health outcomes. One qualitative study was included that reported increased food security.
• Günther (Günther,  2020 ) reviewed 60 articles as part of a Master's thesis on basic income schemes and experiments globally to evaluate income and employment elasticities.
• Gupta et al. (Gupta,  2021 ) conducted a review of basic income experiments globally and examined the effect of mitigating income poverty on mental health.
• Pinto et al. (Pinto,  2021 ) conducted a systematic review that identified 86 articles on 10 basic income interventions implemented globally to examine the various methods used to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions.
• Yang et al. (Yang,  2021 ) reviewed 152 pieces of literature on basic income theories and empirical cases (15 studies globally) to analyze the relationship between conceptual definitions of basic income and how interventions have been implemented.

The current review will be the first to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of various forms of GBI for reducing poverty in high‐income countries, using food security level, consumption, material deprivation and multi‐dimensional poverty indicators as primary outcomes. Although other reviews have included outcomes related to various dimensions of poverty, this review will synthesize findings related to all relevant material, social, and psychological outcomes according to current multi‐dimensional conceptualizations of poverty.

1.4.1. Policy relevance

Although guaranteed basic income as it is thought of today was first proposed by Thomas Paine in the 18th century, there has been a resurgence of support for GBI in recent decades by advocates in various fields: philosophy, economics, social policy, high‐tech, and notably, from opposing points on the political spectrum (Alston,  2017 ). However, a major obstacle to constructive policy debates on GBI is that the theoretical conceptualizations of basic income—usually the universal variety—do not quite align with the ways in which GBI programs, pilots, and experiments have been implemented in practice (Gentilini,  2020 ; Yang,  2021 ). The disassociation between theoretical conceptualizations and the actual designs of empirical GBI interventions, as well as the heterogeneity of these designs, makes it difficult to agree on principles to guide the development of full‐scale GBI programs (Gentilini,  2020 ; Yang,  2021 ). Because empirical GBI interventions only include some features of a true UBI and often enroll participants based on having income below some threshold, there is also ambiguity between the definitions of these interventions and those of liberal welfare programs. As well, the roles of various stakeholders—researchers, politicians, communities, news media—give rise to competing expectations which may result in misperceptions of the findings of GBI studies (Merrill,  2022 ). For these reasons, this review will attempt to develop a framework or rubric to facilitate the evaluation and comparison of various types of GBI interventions, so that empirical evidence can be more objectively assessed and synthesized and be more useful for policy discussions.

The inclusion of alternative and novel poverty measures in this review will also be relevant to public and social policy, particularly with respect to health and healthcare. The association between poverty and poor physical and mental health has been well documented (Boozary & Shojania,  2018 ; Gundersen & Ziliak,  2015 ; McLeod & Veall,  2006 ; Seligman & Schillinger,  2010 ). Income, however, was found to be a weak determinant of health in a large study by the United States Department of Agriculture, which reported that income was associated with 3 of 10 chronic diseases, while food insecurity was associated with all 10 (Gregory Christian & Coleman‐Jensen,  2017 ). Thus, if policymakers rely on official poverty measures based on income, with the assumption that poverty is being measured accurately, vulnerable populations may be overlooked if they are not identified by the poverty measure (Cutillo,  2020 ).

A review of GBI interventions is naturally relevant to discourses of public and social policy since the main goals of GBI are to reduce poverty and societal inequity. Moreover, GBI may benefit a specific population which does not qualify for regular welfare benefits: the “working poor” (Caputo,  2007 ; Koebel & Pohler,  2019 ; Riches & Tarasuk,  2014 ). While welfare eligibility has become more restrictive in recent decades, real income from employment has remained stagnant. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI,  2021 ), productivity and workers’ wages increased at almost the same rate in the United States from the 1940s until the early 1980s. Since then, while productivity has continued to grow at the same pace, increasing by 62% between 1980 and 2020, wages have only increased by 17.5% in these four decades. Over the same time, the income gap between the rich and the poor has grown much wider: household income for the lowest quintile, adjusted for inflation, remained essentially unchanged between 1973 and 2015, whereas for the wealthiest 5% it increased by 60% (Stone et al.,  2020 ). This suggests that most of the wealth generated by the increased productivity during recent decades has gone to the rich. The reasons for this include labor laws that favor corporations over unions, decreasing tax rates for the wealthy, and small increases in the minimum wage which have not kept pace with inflation (EPI,  2021 ). These factors, combined with workfare programs placing more people into low‐paying jobs, have resulted in increasing numbers of the “working poor”.

2. OBJECTIVES

This systematic review will aim to appraise and synthesize the available quantitative evidence on GBI interventions in high‐income countries, for the purpose of comparing the relative effectiveness of specific forms of GBI for alleviating poverty. As such, we will seek to answer the following research questions:

• What are the effects of various forms of a guaranteed basic income (GBI) on poverty and food security in high‐income countries?
• Is there sufficient evidence available to determine a minimum amount of GBI to effect significant reductions in poverty?
• Does GBI affect subgroups within the population differently (by age, ability, education, gender, ethnicity, etc.)?
• How do estimated effect sizes vary with the type of poverty measure used (income based, consumption based, multi‐dimensional measures, and food security level)?
• What is the relationship between the various measures of poverty (i.e., which ones predict similar effects across different types of interventions)?

We will conduct and report this review according to the Methodological Expectations of Campbell Collaboration Intervention Reviews (MECCIR) guidelines (Methods Group,  2019 , 2019 ). Due to the relevance of the review topic to societal equity, we will also follow the PRISMA‐Equity reporting guideline (Welch et al.,  2012 ). As well, we will consult the AMSTAR 2 critical appraisal instrument (Shea et al.,  2017 ), intended to assist policymakers in assessing the quality of systematic reviews, to ensure that this review clearly addresses all the relevant criteria.

3.1. Criteria for considering studies for this review

3.1.1. types of studies.

The review will include primary studies that collect and analyze quantitative data on poverty‐related effects of GBI interventions. We will exclude qualitative studies (e.g., case reports, narrative reports of interviews or focus groups) as well as any literature that refers to primary research reports or findings, such as reviews and compilations of studies, books, news and magazine articles, editorials, opinion pieces, or blogs.

We will include quantitative studies with any of the following designs:

• Randomized controlled trial (RCT)
• Cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT)
• Controlled before and after (CBA)
• Regression discontinuity design (RDD)
• Interrupted time series (ITS) with at least three time points before, three time points after, and a time‐series analysis
• Cohort (prospective or retrospective, including cross‐sectional) with or without a control group, and with at least two repeated outcome measures

Cross‐sectional studies using data from a single time point will be excluded as they do not examine change over time in a particular cohort.

We will include all longitudinal quasi‐experimental designs even if they lack statistical controls; however, the more rigorous designs will likely be deemed to have higher internal validity, based on the risk‐of‐bias assessments.

3.1.2. Types of participants

We will include studies that involve any group of people in developed high‐income countries (defined under “Types of settings” below). Children will be included since some studies examine outcomes for the children of parents or guardians who receive GBI benefits.

3.1.3. Types of interventions

We will include any cash transfer programs for adults (18+ years old) in high‐income countries that meet our four criteria for GBI interventions: (1) regular payment intervals, (2) paid in cash (not in‐kind), (3) a guaranteed minimum amount received unconditionally, and (4) fixed (within 10%) or predictable amounts.

Refundable/payable tax credits will be excluded because they are either small in amount (i.e., not enough to provide an income “base”) or they are conditional (e.g., being employed, enrolled in a training program, having children of a certain age, caring for adults, or having a disability).

GBI benefits can be paid on an individual or household basis. The interventions can be administered by governments (usually as pilot projects) or by non‐governmental or civil society organizations for research purposes. In studies that include control groups, usual care would be in the form of conventional government assistance programs for participants who are eligible to receive them or no government assistance for those who aren't.

3.1.4. Types of outcome measures

Below are descriptions of the outcomes of interest for this review. We will not exclude studies on the basis of outcome measures, as some studies may report other poverty‐related outcomes that are important to include in this review.

The primary outcome of food security level is typically assessed using survey‐based, self‐reported, and validated measures of food security that include questions on various aspects of food security. The survey responses are quantified using scoring rubrics which vary among high‐income countries. Examples of measures include the UN FAO Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), used in Europe and the United Kingdom, and the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) in the United States and Canada (same survey but with differing food insecurity classification thresholds).

For measuring poverty, we will include official national measures such as the United States’ Official Poverty Measure (OPM) and Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), Canada's Market Basket Measure (MBM), OECD relative poverty measure, the poverty gap index, as well as consumption‐based indicators such as the Household Budget Survey (HBS), Consumer Expenditure (CE) Survey, and measures of deprivation such as the European Union's Material Deprivation (MD) Index, and other measures of ability to cover basic needs.

For the secondary outcomes, all measures below will be included. Some outcomes such as weight and height measures, used to determine body mass index (BMI), will be measured using instruments or self‐reporting, while other outcomes such as self‐reported health status will be measured using validated scales (e.g., the SF‐12 Survey for physical and mental health). Some secondary outcomes may be individual components of poverty indicators (e.g., food expenditure would be a component of a consumption measure).

Primary outcomes

• Food security level (using survey‐based, validated measures, as described above)
• Poverty level assessed using instruments intended or designed to measure poverty: income‐based official poverty measures, and alternative/novel measures based on material hardship/deprivation, the consumption level of goods and services, as well as multi‐dimensional measures of physical, social and/or psychological wellbeing

Secondary outcomes

• Food expenditure
• Self‐reported physical and mental health
• Body mass index (BMI)
• BMI for age
• Mid‐upper arm circumference (MUAC)
• Birth weight of children
• Cognitive development, literacy, and numeracy of children
• School/training program enrollment (children and adults)
• Employment/self‐employment status/labor force participation
• Individual/household earnings

3.1.5. Duration of follow‐up

No restrictions will be placed on the duration of follow‐ups.

3.1.6. Types of settings

We will include studies from any setting in developed high‐income countries, according to the classification of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA,  2022 ). Some countries that fall under the high‐income country category of the World Bank (e.g., Chile, Oman, Saudi Arabia) are classified by the International Monetary Fund (IMF,  2022 ) and UN DESA as emerging market economies, developing economies, and/or developing countries. Because these terms are commonly used to refer to low‐ or middle‐income countries in research articles, reports, and policy discussions, we will only include studies from high‐income countries that are classified by UN DESA as developed countries, to avoid potential confusion.

3.2. Search methods for identification of studies

This review will focus on studies that investigate GBI programs and initiatives implemented in developed high‐income countries. The search strategy proposed for this review builds on those used in previous reviews on GBI (Gibson,  2020 ; Pinto,  2021 ). Searches using both keywords and database‐specific controlled vocabulary will be conducted in relevant databases, and complementary searches will be done to identify additional studies as well as pertinent gray literature.

3.2.1. Electronic searches

Searches will be conducted in subject‐specific and multidisciplinary databases to identify relevant published studies to include in this review. Searches will be executed by PRL in the following databases (in alphabetical order): APA PsycInfo (Ovid), Academic Search Complete (EBSCOhost), Business Source Complete (EBSCOhost), Cochrane CENTRAL (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCOhost), EconLit (EBSCOhost), Embase (Ovid), Global Health (EBSCOhost), International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (ProQuest), International Political Science Abstracts (EBSCOhost), MEDLINE (Ovid), PAIS Index (ProQuest), ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest), Sociological Abstracts (including Social Services Abstracts, ProQuest), Web of Science (all indexes), Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (ProQuest).

Database limits will not be used, and no restrictions related to languages, dates, or publication types will be imposed when searching the above resources.

An initial, sensitive search strategy was developed for MEDLINE (Ovid). Given the scope of this review, the research librarian and principal investigator determined that searching broadly for studies related to GBI would suffice and that no additional concepts would be included and combined. To assess its effectiveness, the strategy was peer‐reviewed by another research librarian following the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies (PRESS) guideline for systematic reviews (McGowan,  2016 ). This search strategy will then be translated for the other databases using pertinent subject headings, where applicable, as well as appropriate search syntax. The MEDLINE strategy is available in Supporting Information: Appendix  1 .

In addition to using the above resources, searches will be done in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Ovid), the Campbell Systematic Reviews journal (Wiley), the Social Systems Evidence database (McMaster University), and Epistemonikos (via the Cochrane Library) to identify relevant review articles.

Included studies will be added to Zotero, which integrates notifications from Retraction Watch, to determine if any of them have been retracted. Each included study will also be accessed on its original publisher platform to verify whether any corrections or updates were made since the original text was published.

3.2.2. Searching other resources

Various approaches will be used to identify relevant gray literature.

To find conference proceedings, both the Science and the Social Sciences & Humanities editions of the Conference Proceedings Citation Index will be searched (at the same time as the other indexes in the Web of Science). In addition, reviewers will consult specific conference websites such as the BIEN Congress ( https://basicincome.org/congress-papers/ ) and the Annual Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) Conference ( https://usbig.net/2022congress/ ) to browse proceedings and presentations from the last 5 years.

Relevant graduate research will be found through searches done in ProQuest Theses & Dissertations Global (ProQuest) as well as in many of the databases identified above which also index theses and dissertations.

Government information and other types of gray literature such as white papers and preprints are more challenging to find, but the websites and catalogues of the following organizations will be targeted: United Nations (via ODS; https://documents.un.org/prod/ods.nsf/home.xsp , and via the UN Digital Library; https://digitallibrary.un.org/ ), World Bank (via the Open Knowledge Repository; https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/ , and via its eLibrary; https://elibrary.worldbank.org/ ), World Health Organization ( https://www.who.int/publications ), Social Science Research Network ( https://www.ssrn.com/ ), National Bureau of Economic Research ( https://www.nber.org/ ), Research Papers in Economics ( http://repec.org/ ), Institute of Labor Economics ( https://www.iza.org/ ), and OECD (via its iLibrary (subscription access)). Targeted, specific searches of government websites of Group of seven high‐income countries will also be conducted (Canada; https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/home.html , France; https://www.gouvernement.fr/ , Germany; https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/service/information-material-issued-by-the-federal-government , Italy; no search option for English, Japan; https://www.japan.go.jp/publications/index.html , the United Kingdom; https://www.gov.uk/official-documents , and the United States; https://www.govinfo.gov/ ).

In addition to searching for gray literature, other means of identifying studies will be used and are described below.

Reference lists from relevant knowledge syntheses (systematic and non‐systematic reviews) as well as those from included primary studies will be examined to see if other studies should be considered. Citation searching of included articles will also be conducted using Google Scholar ( https://scholar.google.com/ ).

Once title and abstract screening is complete, journal titles of references eligible for full‐text review will be analyzed to select the five journals that appear most frequently. These journals will then be hand searched by looking specifically at each one's table of contents for the past 5 years.

The corresponding authors of included studies will be contacted by email and will be provided with a list of included articles along with the inclusion criteria for the review. They will be asked if they are familiar with any additional studies that might be relevant. In addition, authors of conference presentations will be contacted to see if their research has been published as articles or if they have data or results that they are willing to share or that will be published in the near future.

3.3. Data collection and analysis

3.3.1. description of methods used in primary research.

GBI interventions (programs, experiments, and pilot studies) have typically been carried out within selected geographic regions with participants whose income falls below a certain threshold amount. Some studies employ a saturation approach where every eligible person in the community who enrolls receives the benefit, so that community‐level effects can be examined. Although the types of outcomes are numerous, data are usually collected using surveys, and sometimes analyzed by incorporating administrative data.

Some basic income experiments are conducted as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with intervention and control groups, while others are of a quasi‐experimental (observational) nature, some using statistical controls such as propensity score matching to reduce bias.

3.3.2. Selection of studies

All stages of screening references will be conducted with the use of Covidence, an online tool designed to streamline certain stages of review projects ( https://www.covidence.org/ ). A summary of the inclusion and exclusion criteria (see Supporting Information: Appendix  2 ) will be posted on Covidence for reference. The selection of studies will begin with title and abstract screening, performed independently whereby each reference will be seen by two reviewers. In case of disagreement, the decision on including the reference will be made by the principal investigator. The same process will be used at the full‐text screening stage to determine the eligibility of the references which are retained after title and abstract screening. The reasons for excluding references at this stage will be recorded and presented in a PRISMA flow diagram.

Both screening phases will be subject to a pilot to ensure that the inclusion and exclusion criteria are applied consistently by all reviewers. Twenty‐five randomly selected references will be used for the title and abstract pilot, and ten randomly selected references will be used for the full‐text pilot. Reviewers will be able to provide feedback in the pilot forms at both stages regarding the clarity of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and we will refine the wording based on the feedback if more than one reviewer expresses the same concern.

3.3.3. Data extraction and management

Data will be extracted by two reviewers working independently, using an extraction form in Excel (Microsoft Corporation,  2022 ), based on the coding template in Supporting Information: Appendix  3 . The form will be piloted with ten articles on studies with diverse designs and outcomes, to check if more questions or categories are required in the form to capture all relevant information on the population, setting, study design, intervention, data collection and analysis, outcomes, and results. Because of the time‐intensive nature of data extraction, we will attempt to resolve discrepancies by consensus between the two reviewers and by consulting a third reviewer if consensus is not reached.

If there are several articles included that report on the same study, two reviewers will perform the extractions using one form each, to consolidate the data reported in these articles. If there are discrepancies in the data reported in different articles on the same study, we will contact the study authors to ask for clarification. If we cannot reach the authors, we will use the data from the articles that present the most complete datasets and statistical analyses.

For multi‐arm studies, we will only include the intervention and control groups that meet our inclusion criteria. However, we will note the presence of the other groups in the ‘Table of characteristics of included studies’.

Based on our preliminary literature review, we do not expect to find crossover designs for GBI interventions, but if we do, we will use data only from the first stage of the study (i.e., before participants are moved into a different study arm) to avoid carry‐over effects.

3.3.4. Assessment of risk of bias in included studies

We will use the risk of bias tool described by Sharma Waddington and Cairncross ( 2021 ), which builds on previously developed tools (Eldridge et al.,  2016 ; Higgins Julian et al.,  2016 ; Hombrados & Waddington,  2012 ; Jimenez et al.,  2018 ; Sterne et al.,  2016 ; Waddington et al.,  2017 ), and combines scoring criteria for randomized and non‐randomized designs so that the quality of studies using both designs can be compared. Risk of bias will be assessed independently by two reviewers, and ratings of “low risk,” “some concerns” or “high risk” will be assigned for each of eight domains: Confounding, Selection bias, Attrition bias, Motivation bias, Performance bias, Measurement error, Analysis reporting, and Unit of analysis error (Sharma & Cairncross,  2021 ). We will attempt to resolve discrepancies by consensus, but if it is not reached, the higher risk of bias rating of the two reviewers will be used (i.e., the more cautious rating). To calculate an overall risk of bias score, we will convert the ratings to numerical values (0 =  low risk , 1 =  some concerns , 2 =  high risk ) and then sum up the values to get an overall score between 0 ( low risk in every domain ) and 16 ( high risk in every domain ).

3.3.5. Measures of treatment effect

For continuous outcomes, we will calculate standardized mean differences ( d ) to estimate effect sizes with 95% confidence intervals using weighted mean differences in natural (raw) units if standard deviations (SDs) are reported. If SDs are not available, we will calculate them using p values, t values, or confidence intervals (if reported) using the Campbell Collaboration effect size calculator ( https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/escalc/html/EffectSizeCalculator-SMD-main.php ).

If some studies report only means and not SDs, p values, t values, or confidence intervals, we will contact the corresponding authors of those studies to see if these statistics can be provided.

To compare effect sizes where two or more studies report on the same outcome but measure it in different ways, we will calculate Hedges’ g values to estimate the effect sizes for each study (Borenstein & Hedges Larry,  2019 ). Compared to Cohen's d , Hedges’ method uses a correction factor in calculating the standardized mean difference to reduce bias due to small sample sizes which can exaggerate the effect size. Hedges’ g can be used to estimate effect sizes for studies with independent groups, and (using a slightly different formula) for matched group and for pre‐post single‐group studies (Borenstein & Hedges Larry,  2019 ).

If dichotomous outcomes are reported, we will calculate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals to compare effect sizes.

For studies that use an interrupted time series (ITS) design, effect sizes can be estimated in two ways: the difference in the slopes of the pre‐ and post‐intervention regression lines, as well as the change in the level of the outcome after the intervention starts. This change is determined by extrapolating the pre‐intervention regression line to the first post‐intervention time point and calculating the ‘distance’ between the two regression lines at that point (Ramsay et al.,  2003 ). Because these effect size estimates are not based on standardized mean differences, the results of ITS studies will be analyzed separately from other study types.

3.3.6. Unit of analysis issues

To minimize unit‐of‐analysis error, we will analyze results separately for different units of analysis: individual, household, and community. GBI studies typically involve individual‐ and household‐level allocation, with pre‐ and post‐intervention measurements.

Cluster designs pose a challenge to comparing effect sizes across studies because the calculation of standardized mean differences is more difficult, due to the within‐cluster and between‐cluster variability (Hedges,  2007 ). Incorporating the total variance (within‐ and between‐cluster) and adjusting for baseline measures of outcome variables and covariates can yield a more accurate estimate of effect size (Taylor et al.,  2022 ). We will use a shiny app provided by Taylor and colleagues ( https://airshinyapps.shinyapps.io/es_2lvl_clust_adj/ ) to perform the calculation of effect sizes for cluster‐design studies.

3.3.7. Criteria for determination of independent findings

We expect to find multiple reports of each GBI study; these will be examined as a single study, and we will use all information available. We also expect that some of the multiple reports will be more complete in terms of describing the methodology, and some may report on the primary outcomes we will examine in this review, while others may report on secondary outcomes. If there are differences in the details between reports, we will contact the authors to verify which is correct (e.g., different numbers of participants).

For multiple outcomes in the same study which are conceptually similar, we will choose (in order of preference): (a) the outcome that was classified as a primary outcome for the study, (b) the outcome that was reported first in the abstract, or (c) the outcome that best matches our definition of the construct.

3.3.8. Dealing with missing data

Studies will not be excluded on the basis of how data are reported. If included articles do not report statistical data necessary for meta‐analyses and the data cannot be calculated reliably (e.g., using reported confidence intervals to calculate SDs for continuous outcomes, or using sample sizes and percentages to derive 2 × 2 tables for dichotomous outcomes), we will contact the study authors to ask for the missing data. If we cannot acquire the necessary statistic, the result will not be used in the meta‐analysis, but will be included in the narrative synthesis.

3.3.9. Assessment of heterogeneity

We will use the I 2 statistic, calculated using RevMan as part of the meta‐analyses, to examine heterogeneity. The I 2 statistic is a percentage estimate of the variation across studies that is due to heterogeneity and not randomness. An I 2 value of 0 (zero) would mean there is no inconsistency across the studies, whereas 1 (or 100%) would mean extreme heterogeneity. Studies that markedly increase the I 2 value will be excluded from meta‐analyses and will be analyzed separately (e.g., if we find that including a fifth study with four others increases I 2 from 0.30 to 0.75).

3.3.10. Assessment of reporting biases

Because GBI interventions are typically conducted by governments (municipal, state/provincial, federal), we expect that reports will be published both in journals and non‐academic sources, and that this will not be associated with publication bias.

To determine if outcomes are selectively reported or omitted, we will compare different articles on each study, and we will also search for proposals, pre‐analysis plans, and protocols, to see if they specify unreported outcomes.

We will also check for selective outcome and analysis reporting using the risk of bias tool described above.

3.3.11. Data synthesis

Quantitative synthesis.

Extracted data will be entered into RevMan by one reviewer, and a second reviewer will independently verify the accuracy of the entered data.

Experimental (RCT) and quasi‐experimental studies will be analyzed separately.

If there is sufficient and appropriate data to conduct meta‐analyses (i.e., two or more studies with the same design reporting on the same outcome), we will calculate the pooled effect size using RevMan. The I 2 statistic will be used to assess heterogeneity between studies. If the I 2 value is small (≤ 25%), indicating low heterogeneity (Higgins,  2003 ), we will use a fixed effects model for the meta‐analysis. If I 2 is larger than 25%, indicating moderate or high heterogeneity, we will use a random effects model. For random effects meta‐analyses, we will estimate the heterogeneity among the effect size parameters using the between‐study variance, τ 2 , which will also be calculated using RevMan.

For multi‐arm studies with a single control group, we will divide the number of participants in the control group by the number of eligible intervention groups, to prevent double counting of participants if more than one intervention group is included in the meta‐analysis.

Narrative synthesis

Due to the variation across GBI interventions, study designs, populations, and outcome measures, we expect that meta‐analyses will not be possible for many of the studies. In this case, we will present the findings of these studies in narrative form, including calculated effect sizes for each study. We will construct tables to classify the studies according to the type of GBI, study design, and outcomes. We will also illustrate effect sizes in graphical form for studies that can be grouped and compared in a meaningful way.

3.3.12. Subgroup analysis and investigation of heterogeneity

We will conduct subgroup analyses according to the study design (cluster randomized controlled trials [cRCTs], controlled before and after [CBA], etc.), study duration (<2 years, 2‐4 years, >4 years), generosity of GBI benefits (relative to the official poverty line), individual/household level payment modality, poverty level threshold for eligibility (e.g., income below official poverty line, no income threshold), and take‐back rate if there is additional income from other sources.

To examine whether GBI interventions impact health inequities within the sample populations, we will assess the effects of GBI on physical and mental health across the sociodemographic categories of the PROGRESS‐Plus framework. The PROGRESS acronym stands for place of residence, race/ethnicity, occupation, gender, religion, education, social capital, and socioeconomic status, while “Plus” refers to any other factors which may be associated with disadvantage, such as age, criminal record, disability, or sexual orientation (Kavanagh et al.,  2009 ; O'Neill et al.,  2014 ). Depending on the context of the study, a “Plus” factor may be the most relevant (O'Neill et al.,  2014 ).

If we conduct other post hoc subgroup analyses not specified above or in Supporting Information: Appendix  4 (Table of subgroup and moderator variable codes), we will report in the review that the additional analyses are post hoc and exploratory in nature.

If there are enough included studies to meaningfully compare the difference in effect across subgroups, we will conduct a meta‐regression to test the mean difference between the groups.

As described above, we will use the I 2 statistic calculated using RevMan to examine heterogeneity. We will investigate the reasons for heterogeneity by exploring and comparing the intervention types and contexts, populations, and outcome measures.

3.3.13. Sensitivity analysis

If there are sufficient similar studies to conduct meta‐analyses, we will verify the robustness of the meta‐analyses by comparing the quality of the studies (as determined by our risk of bias assessments) to ensure that the effect sizes were not excessively influenced by one or more low‐quality studies.

3.3.14. Treatment of qualitative research

We do not plan to include qualitative research.

3.3.15. Summary of findings and assessment of the certainty of the evidence

We will present a GRADE “summary of findings” table and will assess the certainty of the evidence, following the method of Schünemann and colleagues (Schünemann et al.,  2019 ). Separate tables will be presented for each type of GBI intervention (e.g., subsistence‐level benefits for households, monthly amount below €500 for individuals), and the tables will include all the primary and secondary outcomes (listed above) for which results are reported in the included studies.

Two reviewers will independently apply the GRADE approach to assign for each outcome an overall level of the quality of evidence—that is, our level of certainty that the estimate of the effect is close to the true effect. The quality of the evidence will be ranked as “high,” “moderate,” low, or “very low.”

If there is a high degree of heterogeneity among studies so that we cannot pool the results, we will apply the GRADE approach to assess the certainty of evidence and will present a narrative summary of the effect.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF AUTHORS

• Content: Anita Rizvi, Marcia Gibson, Christina Pollard
• Systematic review methods: Vivian Welch, Elizabeth Kristjansson
• Statistical analysis: George A. Wells
• Information retrieval: Patrick R. Labelle

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

VW is editor‐in‐chief and acting CEO of the Campbell Collaboration. VW will not be involved in the editorial decision process for this review.

MG led a scoping review of public health effects of interventions similar to basic income, published in 2020 in Lancet Public Health.

The authors of this review declare no conflicts of interest.

PRELIMINARY TIMEFRAME

The approximate date for submission of the systematic review is December 2022.

PLANS FOR UPDATING THIS REVIEW

We plan to update this review 4 years after publication of the review. If this is not possible for some reason, the lead author will communicate this to the Social Welfare Coordinating Group.

SOURCES OF SUPPORT

Internal sources

• • No sources of support provided

External sources

Supporting information

Supplementary information.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We acknowledge the contribution of Emily Da Silva, Research Librarian at the University of Ottawa Library, who peer‐reviewed the MEDLINE search strategy using the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies (PRESS) guideline for systematic reviews (McGowan et al.,  2016 ).

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Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Essays on universal basic income.

Nana Mukbaniani , The Graduate Center, City University of New York Follow

Date of Degree

Document type.

Dissertation

Degree Name

Sangeeta Pratap

Committee Members

Randall Filer

Lilia Maliar

George Vachadze

Subject Categories

Macroeconomics

Universal Basic Income, Wealth Distribution, Precautionary Savings, Heterogeneous Agents, Inequality, Minimum Consumption Requirement

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a program in which individuals receive a regular sum of money, usually from the government. The transfer amount is thought to be unconditional of income and enough to cover all subsistence needs. Such a system is easy and cheap to administer because the government does not need to check the eligibility of each applicant. UBI programs are growing as more cities, states and countries (Stockton, California, Newark, New Jersey, Ontario, Canada, Kenya, Finland, Germany, Spain, China, etc) implement experiments of such programs. The idea of a UBI is gaining ground in the U.S.. One of the main responses of the U.S. to high unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine was a modified version of a temporary country-wide UBI program in 2020 (CARES Act). 30 mayors across the U.S. created a coalition - Mayors for a Guaranteed Income - to explore cash payment programs and address the racial wealth inequality. UBI is actively discussed to be a potential policy that can mitigate adverse impact of accelerated automation on wages and employment. Thus, it is important to understand what we have learned from UBI experiments, what macroeconomic models predict in the UBI environment, and what is the best approach to implement such programs. This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter I review the literature on a Universal Basic Income (UBI) policy. I explore the UBI experiments that have been conducted worldwide, their limitations, and lessons that we have learned from them. I also review the macroeconomic models that address the idea of unconditional transfers, their limitations and the required future developments to evaluate how UBI works in a more complex and realistic environment. In the second chapter, I use general equilibrium model of heterogeneous agents to evaluate the impact of the UBI system, on aggregate levels and distributions of wealth, consumption, labor, and welfare. I contrast this with a targeted transfers system where people need to meet certain eligibility criteria (usually, income) to qualify for transfers. I find that in the UBI system with $1,000 monthly payments, the level of aggregate capital falls by 16% and the inequality of wealth increases no matter how the UBI system is financed: through taxes or through foreign aid. Guaranteed payments induce people to save less because of less precautionary needs. As precautionary savings motive is stronger for the asset poor, people in the lowest wealth quintiles reduce their savings more, which increases the inequality of wealth. Even though the welfare of the least skilled and the asset poor increases significantly because of unconditional transfers, the tax-financed UBI system requires a consumption tax rate to be equal to 43% that slightly reduces the welfare of the wealthier. Even though consumption tax rate is unrealistically high, the effective consumption tax rate (consumption tax net of transfers) decreases on average and aggregate welfare increases by 15.7% as measured by consumption equivalent variation. A hybrid model with both targeted transfers and partial UBI (monthly payments of $500) with low, 5% capital income tax rate (to encourage savings) is more efficient as it provides significant, almost 8% gain in welfare with only 22% consumption tax rate and without compromising output or welfare of the asset rich. In the third chapter, I study the impact of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) policy on aggregate output and welfare when there is an automation of production technologies. When the productivity of robots increases, robots substitute for labor and thus, the share of labor in value added decreases. I use general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents who face idiosyncratic earnings risk and Cobb-Douglas technology with Traditional Capital and Labor Services. Traditional capital does not include robots and can be employed in production only with labor services. Labor services is a CES nest of robot capital and Human capital that can substitute each other. I calibrate the economy to match the evolution of the labor share in the last three decades. If the productivity of robots doubles, I find that output increases in the new equilibrium and the welfare of wealth poor households decreases significantly resulting in more than 6% decrease in aggregate welfare (measured as consumption equivalent variation, CEV). In such a setting, the transition to a UBI system increases welfare significantly, by more than 15%, however, reduces output by 12% because it reduces the precautionary savings motive. The hybrid system in which every household receives 50% of subsistence requirement and the eligibility threshold for targeted transfers equals 50% of subsistence requirement works well as it is less detrimental to output while increasing aggregate welfare by 4% as CEV. Further increase in output in the UBI and Hybrid systems can be achieved by a lower capital income tax rate.

Recommended Citation

Mukbaniani, Nana, "Essays on Universal Basic Income" (2021). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4321

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Home — Essay Samples — Economics — Political Economy — Universal Basic Income

Essays on Universal Basic Income

Brief description of universal basic income.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a social concept that proposes providing all citizens with a regular, unconditional sum of money, regardless of their employment status or income level. It has gained attention as a potential solution to poverty, inequality, and automation-related job loss. UBI has the potential to transform society by ensuring financial security for all individuals.

Importance of Writing Essays on This Topic

Essays on Universal Basic Income are crucial for academic and personal exploration as they encourage critical thinking, research, and debate on a topic that has far-reaching implications for society. By writing essays on UBI, students and scholars can contribute to the discourse on economic and social policy, and develop a deeper understanding of the potential impacts of UBI on individuals and communities.

Tips on Choosing a Good Topic

• Consider the practical implications of UBI: Explore how UBI can address poverty, inequality, and unemployment.
• Examine the ethical considerations: Investigate the moral and ethical implications of implementing UBI.
• Analyze the economic impact: Delve into the potential effects of UBI on the economy, labor market, and government expenditure.

Essay Topics

• The impact of Universal Basic Income on poverty reduction
• Ethical considerations of implementing Universal Basic Income
• Universal Basic Income and its effect on workforce participation
• The economic implications of Universal Basic Income
• Universal Basic Income as a solution to automation-related job loss
• The role of Universal Basic Income in promoting gender equality
• Universal Basic Income and its impact on healthcare access
• The feasibility of implementing Universal Basic Income in different countries
• Universal Basic Income and its potential effects on entrepreneurship
• The psychological and social impact of Universal Basic Income on individuals and communities

Concluding Thought

Writing essays on Universal Basic Income provides an opportunity to engage with a topic that has the potential to reshape societal structures and address pressing economic and social challenges. By exploring the various aspects of UBI, individuals can contribute to the ongoing dialogue and shape future policy decisions. Get involved in the conversation by delving into the world of Universal Basic Income through your essays.

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Could Universal Basic Income Help End Poverty?

A supporter carries a sign representing Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang's plan for a $1000 monthly universal basic income during a 2019 rally in New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

A supporter carries a sign representing Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang's plan for a $1000 monthly universal basic income during a 2019 rally in New York City.

People who work on ways to end poverty have been trying a simple approach lately: just giving money to those in need, with no strings attached. Universal basic income, or UBI, once seemed like a radical idea in the US. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang pitched it as part of his 2020 campaign. It didn't take. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which showed that a little money from the government could help some people in big ways. And now, many places in the country are pushing to make UBI a permanent part of the social safety net. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This , sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org . Email us at [email protected] .

This episode was produced by Jonaki Mehta. It was edited by Bridget Kelley and Catherine Laidlaw. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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A thesis about trade unions and Basic Income

by Malcolm Torry | Sep 15, 2020 | Research

Luca Michele Cigna has written a master’s degree thesis about trade unions’ positions on Basic income: Looking for a North Star? Trade unions’ positions in the Universal Basic Income debate

First, unions’ propensity to support a UBI depends on the degrees of socio-economic insecurity. In contexts characterised by high levels of poverty, unemployment and precariousness, UBI proposals look more attractive in the eyes of union leaders. Secondly, welfare regime generosity is a strong explanans of trade unions’ support. Less encompassing welfare systems encourage trade unionists to regard UBI as a legitimate policy alternative. Third, trade unions’ attachment to the work ethic and the insurance principle affects their preferences for unconditionality and universality in policy settings. Fourth, their role in the industrial landscape, and their degree of organisational inclusivity, have a strong influence on UBI support.

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British farmers want basic income to cope with post-Brexit struggles

Schemes to replace EU subsidies will not plug gap left by loss of EU subsidies for most farmers

Farmers are calling for the government to grant them a universal basic income, saying the post-Brexit agriculture subsidy scheme has left many poorer.

Delays to the sustainable farming schemes put in place after the UK left the European Union, to replace the common agricultural policy (CAP), have meant that in England many farmers have been left out of pocket. The new regime initially suffered from low subscription rates , and the government has underspent hundreds of millions from the £2.4bn farming budget each year due to lack of sign-up.

Scotland and Wales have different farming schemes, and Northern Ireland has not yet set up its new scheme due to Stormont not having sat for two years. In Wales, there have been protests over plans to ask farmers to set aside 20% of their farms for nature and tree planting.

Government projections and independent analysis have shown that the new nature payments schemes will not plug the gap left by the lack of EU subsidies for most farmers. The nature schemes were never meant to replace the CAP payments exactly, and instead are aimed at paying farmers to provide public goods.

Now, at least 100 farmers have signed up to a new campaign group, BI4Farmers, to ask for a universal basic income (UBI) for all farmers in Britain.

The campaigners said that farmers across the UK were “basically kept afloat” by EU subsidies and now risk going out of business. Analysis by the organic farming group Riverford has found that half of farmers surveyed said they may go out of business due to post-Brexit trade deals, uncertainty over farming payment schemes and rising costs.

Jo Poulton, the BI4Farmers coordinator, said: “British farmers are overworked and underpaid but the Brexit process presents an ideal opportunity to change this.

“A basic income for farmers would guarantee an adequate income, improving access to time off and reasonable working hours and making entering a career in farming affordable for new entrants.”

Sustainable farming groups have also shared their support for a UBI for farmers to enable to them to experiment with nature friendly farming methods such as using fewer pesticides without sacrificing their income.

Will White, sustainable farming campaign coordinator at Sustain, said: “Universal basic income could be an important safety net for farm workers and small new entrant growers, providing financial security that liberates them to pursue agro-ecological practices without the looming pressure of financial survival.

“When paired with better funding for environmental land management schemes, UBI has the potential to significantly bolster the agricultural sector’s overall resilience. Looking into radical yet promising solutions like this is essential. We support a deeper exploration of how basic income policies could work in the UK context and are watching this campaign with interest.”

Ruth West, a cofounder of the Oxford Real Farming Conference, added: “Concerned citizens, farmers in dire straits, policymakers and all those who care about a fairer food system should get onboard and help move this practical, doable plan to the next phase.

“BI4Farmers presents us with a golden opportunity for a sustainable farming future. It’s an opportunity we must not miss.”

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A Massachusetts city is giving families at risk of losing their homes $750 a month, no strings attached

• Somerville, Massachusetts will pilot a guaranteed basic income program for 200 low-income families.
• The program will offer $750 no-strings monthly payments to keep people in their homes.
• Somerville's income pilot joins similar programs in Austin, San Antonio, Denver, and Minneapolis. 

A Massachusetts city is giving low-income families $750 a month, no strings attached. The guaranteed basic income program will focus on residents who are in danger of losing their homes.

The Somerville GBI Pilot will serve about 200 low-income families currently experiencing housing insecurity . Participants must already be enrolled in local social and housing services.

The city — located northwest of Boston — announced March 20 that it will allocate $1.8 million toward the program.

For a full year, participating households will receive cash payments every month to spend as they choose. Somerville began enrolling eligible households last month and will start payments in July.

Guaranteed basic income is rising in popularity in American cities. Income programs have been piloted in San Antonio, Austin , Boston, Minneapolis, and Durham, North Carolina . Some programs, like one in Denver , have been so successful that their funding was extended.

Basic-income participants have told Business Insider they used the money to pay rent, buy groceries, pay off credit-card debt, and support their children.

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"My life was always just a couple hundred dollars short," a participant in San Antonio's income program told BI. "For the first time, I can breathe."

Basic income could help Somerville families pay rent

The City of Somerville said in a press release that their basic-income pilot aims to test the GBI model as a potential long-term poverty solution.

Nearly 17% of all renting households in Somerville spend more than half of their income on housing, per the city . And, 51% percent of all renters in the Greater Boston Area were cost-burdened in 2022, according to The Boston Foundation's 2023 Housing Report Card . To be considered cost-burdened, a household must spend at least 30% of their income on housing.

"Sometimes you just need some solid ground under your feet to get by and move forward, and this program is looking to provide that foothold," Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne said in a public statement. Ballantyne is a member of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income .

The city will pull funding from President Joe Biden's 2021 American Rescue Plan Act , also known as ARPA. The federal funds are intended to alleviate the public health and economic impacts of the pandemic in US cities. Somerville previously dedicated millions in ARPA funds to childcare and rental assistance programs.

Researchers at The University of Massachusetts will evaluate the impact of GBI on Somerville participants throughout the program's run, the city said. Program findings will be shared with local leaders and the public.

Despite opposition, income pilots continue across the country

The introduction of GBI programs hasn't been without opposition. In Arizona , South Dakota , Iowa, and Texas, Republican legislatures and governors are making an effort to ban basic income.

Some lawmakers have called GBI " a socialist idea " and worry it will make people too dependent on the government.

"I think the Founding Fathers would say that is very contrary to our capitalist system and encouraging people to work," John Gillette, a Republican state representative from Arizona, told BI last month .

Still, basic income programs continue to be piloted at the local level. St. Louis, Missouri recently distributed $500 monthly payments to low-income families, and Flint, Michigan is offering funds to new mothers. A program in Atlanta is also offering no-strings payments to low-income Black women.

Have you benefited from a guaranteed basic-income program? Share your story with this reporter at [email protected] .

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The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income pp 529–546 Cite as

Socialist Arguments for Basic Income

• David Casassas 3 ,
• Daniel Raventós 3 &
• Maciej Szlinder 4  
• First Online: 18 October 2023

252 Accesses

Part of the book series: Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee ((BIG))

Casassas, Raventós, and Szlinder set out from the position that the socialist tradition is heir to the main cornerstones of the old republican tradition, and they employ possible republican arguments for Basic Income to understand the socialist potential of Basic Income. They first analyse the republican social ontology—that is, the republican description of social life—and the resulting republican conceptualization of freedom and democracy, and then they show why and how such a perspective helped and helps to shape socialist arguments and strategies for an emancipatory Basic Income for present-day societies. In the last section of the chapter they explore historical and institutional considerations about the political need and feasibility of emancipatory Basic Income schemes under contemporary circumstances.

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Casassas, D., Raventós, D., Szlinder, M. (2023). Socialist Arguments for Basic Income. In: Torry, M. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income. Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41001-7_26

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