Review on basic income (BI): its theories and empirical cases

Abstract

A basis of fundamental knowledge of different basic income approaches (BI) is essential to be elaborated for enhancing the prevalent debates on BI as an important solution on social transformation. Aiming to contribute to the current knowledge gaps and future research agendas on BI, this paper elaborates on BI theories and BI empirical cases, linkage, and gaps between these two parts. A total of 152 pieces of literature on BI theories and BI empirical cases were intensively reviewed, which includes BI definitions, positive and negative conceptual impacts of BI argued to bring to human society from social, economic, and policy-and-governance perspectives, as well as the implementation and the outcomes of 15 selected BI empirical cases. Our findings indicate that BI definitions remain imprecise, and the BI empirical cases are implemented in diverse ways. We also identified that many conceptual impacts of BI were not achieved in the reviewed BI empirical cases. We further argue that the policy environment for implementing BI has not been entirely created at present, and a key issue is that the ambiguity between the BI theories and BI empirical cases causes difficulties to generate widely agreed principles guiding the implementation of BI. This paper suggests that future studies on BI should focus more on revising existing BI definitions which need to be simplified, detailed, and unified, generating universal principles guiding the implementation of BI, and developing indicators measuring BI's consequences.

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

“…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).…”

“…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.…”

A Bayesian Approach to Examine the Feasibility of Integrating Machine Learning to Recognize Households’ Eligibility in a Basic Income System

“…Appeals to governments for implementing basic income programs are all contemporary including the United Kingdom (Jordan , 2012;Mori, 2017), Germany (Scientific Advisory Board at the Federal Ministry, 2021; Coalition agreement SPD, The Greens and FDP, 2021) and Spain (Perkiö, 2013;De Durana & Rodrigu, 2021). In addition to the major programs and plans, there are a large number of small scale pilot projects, which are mostly revolving around several experiments in the United States (Yang et al, 2021) and serve as scientific controlled trials to capture the potential up and downs of performing the this idea (Moffitt, 2003). A complete list of the major implemented or ongoing basic income programs can be found in the world bank (Gentilini et al, 2020).…”

“…The idea of paying uniformly distributed basic income to all members of a society might improve the quality of life and reduce poverty, however, there are yet theoretical debates (Hoynes & Rothstein, 2019;Yang et al, 2021;Jackson, 2017;OECD, 2017;Zheng et al, 2020) regarding the financing a broad basic income program. Basically, if the equally transferred cash to all individuals be set too low, it becomes insufficient in reducing poverty.…”

“…Subsequently, it has become inevitable for the Iranian administration to pursue the idea of a basic income, which incorporates a households' eligibility application in its system. Apart from Iran's experience, the most recent or currently ongoing basic income initiatives all around the world, are attached to certain socioeconomic conditions to select the eligible receivers (Yang et al, 2021).…”