A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.
The Royal Society of Arts Explains: [2 minutes]
BIEN Congresses
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)
Recent News, Opinion, and Research
Basic Income and microcredit together
Katrin Oemmelen has written an article, 'Using poverty reduction policies in the fight against COVID-19', which is a summary of her dissertation. The results of a six-year research project in Namibia shows that access to financial tools such as universalbasic income...
Researcher sought to study the Maricá experiment
Details of the unconditional local currency income experiment in Maricá can be found here; with a translation in Portuguese here. The European Commission is advertising for a post-doctoral researcher to study the unconditional local currency experiment in Maricá in...
Basic Income World Wide Survey
During the first Worldwide Meeting of UBI Advocates and UBI Networks, held on 7th of April, 2020, comprising members of BIEN who were interested in advocacy, a proposal resolved to carry out a survey about the economic measures taken by different countries in response...
A new World Bank report, ‘Exploring Universal Basic Income’
The World Bank has published a substantial report titled Exploring Universal Basic Income: A guide to navigating concepts, evidence, and practices Universal basic income (UBI) is emerging as one of the most hotly debated issues in development and social protection...
The Latin American Basic Income Network
It was late October 2019, when different academics and activists from all over Latin America were preparing to meet in the south of Chile to share our ideas and perspectives on UBI for the first time. The idea of forming a regional basic income network had been...
A European Basic Income pilot project would be good for Bulgaria
The EU Commission has said from the 25th September 2020 signatures can be collected from EU residents in connection with a new European Citizens Initiative. If the European UBI family succeeds in gathering 1 000 000 signatures, divided among a minimum of seven...
A new overview report from the Stanford UBI Lab
The Basic Income Lab at the University of Stanford has published a useful overview report, What we know about Universal Basic Income: A cross-synthesis of reviews This report is structured as follows. First, it provides an overview of the reviews. Then it synthesizes...
Marie Claire publishes an article about a recipient of an experiment in Jackson, Mississippi
Marie Claire has published an article by Katia Savchuk that describes the experience of one of the participants in an experiment that gave $1,000 a month for a year to twenty individuals selected by ballot. ... In November 2018, McDonald got a call from Aisha...
A webinar hosted in India on the 7th August
The organisers say this about the webinar: The Web Lecture is being delivered by Professor Guy Standing, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London; Co-founder and Co-President, Basic Income Earth Network and Former Director of ILO's Socio-Economic...
A Canadian Sayout newsletter article about Basic Income
The Canadian Sayout newsletter has printed an article about Basic Income: ... At present government is paying out vast sums of money. In effect, we have a new and large-scale experiment by government in directly providing people with incomes. This gives us some...
South Africa to Replace Emergency Coronavirus Cash Transfer with Basic Income Grant
There is a translation of this article into French On 21 April 2020, President Ramaphosa announced a 500 Billion Rand relief package in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The package included top-ups for existing cash transfer recipients and the introduction of an...
The third Basic Income Conversation
BIEN has published its third Basic Income Conversation, this time about Brazil. In this conversation, Lena Lavinas and Leandro Ferreira debate the Covid pandemic, Brazil's response, and their relationship to the Basic Income debate. https://youtu.be/IfD7DbrDieA