Volume 17, Issue 2

The pandemic has exposed the costs of job and income losses. Emergency cash transfers can mitigate the worst immediate effects on people who lack access to safety nets. This research note provides estimates for a potential Temporary Basic Income (TBI) for poor and near-poor people across 132 developing countries, as well as the minimum cost of income support sufficient to mitigate the pandemic-induced poverty increase. The total monthly cost of the TBI ranges 0.27–0.63% of developing countries’ combined GDP, depending on the choice: (i) top-ups on each country’s average incomes up to a vulnerability threshold; (ii) transfers based on each country’s median standard of living; or (iii) uniform transfers. This note argues that some form of TBI is within reach and can inform a larger conversation about how to build comprehensive social protection systems that make the poor and near-poor more resilient to economic downturns in the future.

While there is a substantive literature on the link between welfare states and individuals’ trust, little is known about the micro-linkage of the conditionality of welfare as a driver of trust. This study presents a unique randomized social experiment investigating this link. Recipients of the regular Dutch social assistance policy are compared to recipients of two alternative schemes inspired by the basic income and based on a more trusting and unconditional approach, testing the main reciprocity argument in the literature: a trusting government will harvest trust from welfare recipients in return. Particularly trust in local government – the level at which the experiment was implemented – increases among recipients of the alternative treatments. Subsequently, we innovatively theorize and test rigorously which mediating mechanisms might explain this increase. Policy evaluation, social integration, and psychological well-being are studied in this respect. Of these, the only underlying mechanism proven to mediate the treatment effect in local political trust, is citizens’ satisfaction with policy.

Anti-poverty policies and attitudes of distrust toward the needy share a long history. From the narratives of de Quevedo’s El Buscón , in which beggars are presented as able-bodied individuals making a concerted effort to take advantage of others, to the invasive physical tests and “workhouses” that were part of the English Poor Laws, the poor have long been regarded as deserving careful oversight. Although in increasingly subtle ways, this history continues as part of a popular set of policies in Latin America called “Conditional Cash Transfers,” which make income support conditional on certain behavioral changes. This paper argues that this resumption in recent times is normatively problematic because it harms the beneficiaries’ self-esteem, leading to stereotypes and sociological errors that reproduce social hierarchies. Alternatively, the paper advances a comparative defense of Basic Income on the basis of its lesser-known affinity with non-discriminatory attitudes.

This article provides a map of the UBI debate, structured into the main themes that guide and group the arguments on both sides. It finds that UBI’s supporters and opponents both draw on core principles of justice and freedom, focusing on need and poverty, discrimination and inequality, growth, social opportunity, individuality, and self-development. From an economic perspective, they both appeal to business concerns about efficiency, risk, flexibility, and consumption, as well as labour interests on work fulfilment, working conditions, remuneration, and bargaining. Likewise, they focus on political questions around welfare state reforms, redistribution, taxation and funding sources, democratic citizenship, and the prospects for cross-party policy coalitions. By providing an overview of the thematic pillars of the UBI debate, this article helps researchers and activists locate and orient themselves within the wider spectrum of opinion on UBI.