Saturday April 30th was a significant day for the UK UBI movement, as over 30 people from around the country came together in Sheffield to discuss movement coordination and consolidation. Attendees included politicians, researchers, civil society organisations, and activists. Institutiions represented included the Green Party and the Alliance Party, the Universities of Bath and Northumbria, the Basic Income Conversation, COMPASS, Autonomy, the UBI Lab Network, Citizens Network and, of course, BIEN.
A participatory movement mapping session preceded an afternoon talking strategy around funding, communication, engaging with critics, and building institutions to foster integration, more effective and efficient use of shared resources, and coordinated campaigning. Attendees have committed to meeting again to take forward plans that were put in place in Sheffield, and to work towards major national events such as the 2024 BIEN Congress, which for the first time in 35 years will be hosted in England.
FRIBIS will be hosting a three-part Summer School this year which will take place in Freiburg (Germany). Each part will focus on the topic of “Empirical Methods in UBI Investigation” but from different perspectives. The Summer School will be held in English and applications can be submitted now. Application deadline: 22nd May 2023.
July 10th – How to build a UBI pilot – Delivered by Dr. Neil Howard (University of Bath) & Dr. Sarath Davala (Basic Income Earth Network) – A growing number of UBI pilot tests are being proposed or are in preparation around the world. However, there is limited knowledge about how to design a pilot, the most appropriate methods, and the ethics of pilot research. Participants will address these issues.
July 11th-14th – Social Contract Lab Experiments – Delivered by Prof. Bernhard Neumärker (Universität Freiburg), Prof. Lorenzo Sacconi (Università degli Studi di Milano Statale), Prof. Marco Faillo (Università di Trento) & Dr. Virginia Cecchini Manara (Università degli Studi di Milano Statale) – It will focus on the application of Social Contract Theory to behavioural and experimental economics, both in theory and practice. Participants will discuss the relevance of behavioural experiments for normative theories and learn how to design and conduct lab experiments.
July 18th-20th – Microsimulation & Social Welfare Maximization – Delivered by Prof. Ugo Colombino (University of Turin) – Both young researchers (MSc, PhD) and more advanced academics who are nevertheless still beginners in static modelling will have the rare opportunity to learn from an extensive introduction to the development of static microsimulation models and welfare analysis, covering both theory and practice.
We are looking forward to your application and we’d be pleased if you could share the event with potentially interested students, phd-candidates & colleagues.
Jamesta Istimewa is a Basic Income Pilot experiment that provides participants free cash payments without strings attached. “Jamesta” means Universal Basic Income Guarantee in Bahasa (Indonesian language), and “Istimewa” means “special,” which is nothing but another name for the Special Region of Yogyakarta. In this place, this experiment was conducted. Jamesta Istimewa also has the privilege of being the first Crowdfunding-Based Basic Income Pilot experiment in Yogyakarta and Indonesia, which was carried out in a structured and systematic manner.
Yogyakarta’s Basic Income Pilot (YBIP) was conducted to answer some basic questions: Do people tend to be lazy when receiving free money? Is that true, or is it just a myth? Can Basic Income – to a certain extent – positively affect a person’s mental health? How do Basic Income recipients interpret and respond to Basic Income payments for themselves and their future? As well as various other interesting questions that have been coloring the debates related to the pros and cons of UBI, especially in the Indonesian context.
This Basic Income Pilot ran from November 2021 to April 2022. Experimental participants were recruited through an online open form distributed to the public in Yogyakarta. This city was chosen because it has a unique and interesting sociodemographic characteristic. Yogyakarta is widely known as a college-student-friendly city. With hundreds of universities, students come here from all over Indonesia. Yogyakarta is also known as a city of arts and culture with various relics of the past, which attracts millions of tourists from all over the world every year. Yogyakarta is also known as an area with a relatively low minimum wage level compared to other provinces in Indonesia. Furthermore, the cost of living in Yogyakarta is also touted as one of the cheapest in the country. Of course, the attributions above are debatable. But Yogyakarta’s unique sociocultural and socioeconomic setting was considered appropriate and exciting for carrying out this first Basic Income experiment in Indonesia.
Anyone living within the province of Yogyakarta during the experimental period (November 2021-April 2022) could register as a participant. Yogyakarta consists of four regencies (Sleman, Bantul, Kulon Progo, and Gunung Kidul) and one city (Yogyakarta City). According to the results of the 2020 Population Census (BPS, September 2020), the total population of DIY was 3,668,719 people. Participants who lived in Yogyakarta did not have to have a Yogyakarta ID card. Those who had a Yogyakarta ID card but lived outside Yogyakarta at the time of the experiment could not register as participants. When registration opened online on October 15, 2021, there were 2150 initial registrants. It was found that 50 double registrants had to be removed. Thus, the total number of registrants for this experiment was 2,100 people spread across five DIY regions. The average age of applicants was 33 years, with a composition of 51.4 percent male and 48.1 percent female. Of a hundred Pilot participants, 60 percent of them are female.
From the 2,100 registrants, 100 participants were randomly selected to be involved in further experiments: 25 recipients of basic income (control group) and 75 people who did not receive basic income but were willing to be involved and fill out the questionnaire given by the researcher (control group). The drawing process was carried out via Livestream on YouTube, and the recording can be seen here.
Jamesta Istimewa was run by a group of enthusiastic volunteer-young people in Yogyakarta. Most of them live in Yogyakarta, and some work remotely from outside the city, for example in Bandung and Jakarta. This experiment ran because of the full support of the CEOs of Kita Bisa (M. Al Fatih Timur) and M. Faiz Ghifari (Strategic Initiatives Kitabisa.com). Sena M. Luphdika was the project coordinator responsible for the overall management and implementation of this Pilot. Sena was supported by several other volunteers, such as Bimo Ario Suryandaru (Campaign Coordinator), Dianti Wulansari, Kurniawan Adhi, and Niko Febrianur (Webmaster). They are the ones who were behind the scenes running this Pilot from beginning to end. Yanu Endar Prasetyo (IndoBIG Network & Research Center for Population BRIN) is the research coordinator responsible for the study of this Pilot.
The final report of this pilot experiment will be released on Sunday, May 7, 2023 in a public discussion in Yogyakarta with some panelists such as Sarath Davala (Chair, BIEN), Dr. Nawawi (Chair, Research Center for Population – BRIN), Herni Ramdlaningrum (The Prakarsa) and representatives from the Yogyakarta Province Poverty Reduction Acceleration Team. The discussion also can be followed on YouTube Live Stream by clicking here.
You are kindly invited to a symposium that will showcase the latest findings from Basic Income’s newest pilots in India and Brazil. BIEN’s Sarath, Julio and Diana will present their latest work as well as policy considerations for international development related to this tool.
This one-day event is set for 30 May and will be held at Vienna ‘s Center for International Development in collaboration with the University of Vienna, Austria.
Program and registration (in person and via Zoom) can be found by clicking here.
Directed by Marc Levin and executive produced by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income Founder Michael Tubbs, “It’s Basic” will premiere at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in New York this June. The documentary explores the power of cash, the importance of dignity, and the ongoing work of providing an income floor through the eyes of our movement leaders – guaranteed income recipients, and Mayors Melvin Carter (Saint Paul, MN) and Sumbul Siddiqui (Cambridge, MA).
You can follow the details of Tribeca Film Festival 2023 and find more information about the film at: https://tribecafilm.com/festival
UBI4ALL announces the date of its next raffle! Mark your calendars for 23 April 2023. UBI4ALL will be livestreaming the raffle of one year Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) on that day from 7pm CEST. Join us and, with a little luck, win 800 euros a month – and experience what a year of a guaranteed minimum income feels like. To register for the raffle click here.
