Experiments of Basic Income in Worlds of Welfare

Abstract

Experiments of ‘basic income' in worlds of welfare suggest that different countries are prone to experience the same pressures and moreover, in ways that lead them to produce the same socio-economic outcomes, resulting in their convergence toward an alternative social policy tool outside of their own traditional welfare models to deal with such problems. The implication is that no single welfare model has proven adequate to the task of reducing or reversing negative outcomes to any significant extent thus far. This is the most probable reason why each type of welfare regime has designed and implemented a ‘basic income' pilot in the post-2008 crisis period. However, experimental designs and results have so far diverged from each other in interesting ways, likely reflecting the interactions between different versions of ‘basic income' and the different national environments in which they have been deployed.