Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) has become an important topic of debate both in mature states in terms of social security systems – in Europe, Canada and the USA – and in various developing countries. In contrast to a decade ago, legislators are looking at the UBI as an important instrument in the reform of social protection systems for the coming decades. In recent years, the debate has focussed on pilot experiences: in India, a study has just been completed (which could lead to a follow-up study), while other UBI schemes have been tested in Finland, Kenya and Uganda since January 2017. In addition, other UBI experiments are being defined or seriously considered in countries as diverse as Canada, Scotland, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and France, to name just those where the discussion is most advanced.
The primary objective of these experiments with an UBI is to explore how this income impacts the individual and social well-being of its beneficiaries, as well as to obtain robust evidence on how their behaviour is altered by obtaining this income. In particular, a large part of the studies are geared towards analysing the recurring argument about the possible facilitation of the exit from the formal labour market promoted by the UBI. At the same time, proponents of an UBI want these studies to also focus on other issues, such as the potential effects at a personal and social level, including the use of free time outside the paid labour market, political involvement and community life, and the effects on health and well-being. Beyond the experimental design, the proponents of the UBI pilot cases are also interested in field-testing the implementation of UBI and thus discovering (and possibly remedying) the legal, social and political limitations that the implementation of UBI would entail.
In this project we propose to examine a number of philosophical considerations related to this recent move towards evidence-based legislation and, in particular, in relation to the role of pilot projects and experiments in relation to the concept of UBI. These considerations are pertinent to the questions that experiments with an UBI aim to answer: ethical considerations about a pilot study in an experimental setting (dividing the population into control and treatment groups), the social epistemology of experiments under conditions of epistemological uncertainty and disagreements in public policy, the epistemological status of the evidence obtained through experiments in evidence-based legislation, and the relationship between experimental evidence and political theories that justify the adoption of an UBI.
More about UBIEXP here