This opinion piece discusses how to get people to sign the EU petition for basic income.
Henrik Roseno, “Unconditional Basic Income and Joint Division of Labor is a natural evolution of democratic societies,” Transformation.dk, September the 3rd, 2013
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) recently completed a large pilot project on Basic Income in India. The association’s June Newsletter reports on the methodology and findings of the study.
The project randomly assigned 8 out of 20 villages in the study to receive the grant, while the other 12 villages were used as controls. Every adult man and woman in the treatment villages received a grant of 200 Rupees (about US$3 or N$30) per month and every child received 100 Rupees per month. After one year, the amounts were increased to 300 Rupees and 150 Rupees respectively. A total of 6,000 individuals in the 8 villages received the grants for 12 to 17 months. The amount was equivalent to about 20 to 30 percent of household income for the lower-income families in the study.
Researchers conducting the study found that the grants significantly reduced hunger, malnutrition, and illness among recipients. Recipients increased ownership of livestock, reduced, improved school attendance, improved school attendance, and increased investment in agricultural implements. Researchers found no increase in alcohol consumption in the treatment villages. Importantly, the study also found that grant recipients worked more than people in the control villages and that they were three times more likely to start a new business. These results for a positive effect on work effort and earned income (found both the Uganda and the India studies) are confirmed by evidence from cash transfer programs. For example, in South Africa, the Old Age Pension, the Child Support Grant, and the Disability Grant all helped to raise labor force participation and employment.
SEWA, “Unconditional cash transfers: SEWA pilots a unique experiment in Madhya Pradesh,” We the Self-Employed: SEWA’s Electronic Newsletter, No. 50, June 2013.
No. 50, June 2013
This article Irish Examiner argues in favour of basic income. Summary: Paid work is a scarce resource. Basic income is one way to support people to share the paid work available and still have a decent income. It’s also a way to show we value all the unpaid work that people do in communities and households. Victoria White comes at this subject from an unusual angle and advocates basic income as part of the response.
Victoria White, “We need to stop tax system incentivising dual-income families,” Irish Examiner, Thursday, August 22, 2013
Aynur Bashirova – BI News – 2013.
Guy Standing, in his interview with Stanislas Jourdan, published in Basic Income UK, talks about the rising social class called “Precariat” and its dangers for society. Standing is a Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath and one of the founders and co-president of BIEN. Precariat is a social class, members of which suffer from precarity, existence without predictability or security. It started with governments making labor markets more flexible and more and more people ended up being pushed into precariat. This social class encompasses three types of people. The first type is the people coming from working class conditions. Second type is the immigrants. The ones that belong to the final type are the young, educated people. All three of them have different social consciousness, but more and more they came to share the same feeling of precarity. Solution to this condition, according to Standing, is BI, which will create more security, both in private and work life of people belonging to this social group. He believes that movements led mostly by young people will become a wake up call for politicians to realize the existing situation and its solution.
Jourdan, Stanislas. (6 August 2013). “The Dangers and Hopes of the Precariat: An Interview with Guy Standing.” Basic Income UK. https://basicincome.org.uk/article/2013/08/guy-standing-interview-precariat/.
Irish blogger Lui Smyth identifies three tendencies in our contemporary situation which makes a basic income a lively (and necessary) possibility: The decline of the middle class, the end of full employment and the rise of a non-market economy. Originally published on the author’s blog, simulacrum.cc, this article has been widely reposted.
Lui, Smyth, “Three trends that will create a demand for basic income,” Simulacrum, July 10, 2013. https://simulacrum.cc/2013/07/10/three-trends-that-push-us-towards-an-unconditional-basic-income/
Also appears at: https://basicincome.org.uk/opinions/2013/08/trends-for-basic-income/
The 24th BIEN CONGRESS in Maricá & Niterói – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 27-29 August 2025
Linkedin, Instagram, X – biencongress25 (at) gmail [dot] com
BIEN2024 was August 29–31 (Pictures and more coming soon)