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Basic income as a pivoting reform

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, Article number: 0125 (2017) Cite this article

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Basic income is a democratizing reform that is long overdue. A guarantee of basic security is necessary to allow people to stand as more independent. Other institutional adjustments are needed, but basic income will help other policies designed to support human development to be more effective.

The proposal for a basic income — to give all residents a regular income stipend that is at least sufficient to live on and not dependent on means-testing or a requirement to work — has been making waves among academics and the wider public. The proposal was seriously discussed in the United States in the 1970s. It has recently made a comeback in Europe with a referendum in Switzerland in 2016, and in 2017 the Finnish government introduced a two-year official experiment investigating a version of this policy change. However, the idea remains controversial, with a British parliamentary inquiry, also held in 2017, rejecting it as a “distraction”.

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  1. Department of Politics, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK

    Louise Haagh

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  1. Louise Haagh
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Correspondence to Louise Haagh.

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Haagh, L. Basic income as a pivoting reform. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0125 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0125

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