Global Basic Income Survey

Posted on August 2, 2020

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Dear Colleagues interested in Universal Basic Income (UBI),

During the Worldwide First Meeting of UBI Advocates and UBI Networks, held on 7th of April, 2020, comprising members of Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and BIEN Social Outreach it was decided to carry out a global survey about all BI-like economic measures taken by different countries (jurisdictions) in response to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.

The survey team includes: Liz Fouksman, Reinhard Huss, Ali Mutlu Köylüoğlu, Julio Linares, Annie Miller, Sheila Regehr, Toni Pickard and Malcolm Torry. We thank others who contributed to this process.

Our survey has three aims:

1) To discover how many jurisdictions/governments around the world, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, have claimed to have implemented a basic income, OR have implemented new measures that fulfil some characteristics and functions of a basic income, even if such new measures are not claimed to be basic income.

2) To explore and compare the social service context of each jurisdiction which has introduced a basic or partial-basic income scheme.

3) To find out more about the organizations whose remit is basic income only, and of those whose remit includes basic income among other ideas, and the extent to which these organizations work together.

We want to obtain information from as many countries (jurisdictions) in the world as possible. This will help us to get a global overview of what is happening regarding Basic Income (BI) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some countries are federated states which describes a form of political decentralisation. The federated units which make up the federated state are called either states, provinces, counties, cantons, Länder or other term. Some examples are Brazil, Canada, Germany and India. In these federated states the sub-national units may have the authority to introduce a BI. If this has happened in your country, please provide a separate response for each federated unit or the one where you reside.

There are other forms of political decentralisation such as the devolution in the United Kingdom. In this case the devolved subnational units do not normally have the political authority to introduce a BI. However, if you believe that a BI has been introduced at a sub-national level in such a state, please complete the survey for the devolved unit in which you reside.

Most questions are factual but we live in a world where people may interpret the same facts in different ways. Therefore we want to get as many responses from each country as possible.

The questionnaire should be completed by an individual familiar with the defining characteristics of basic income on the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) website You may be:

– An office holder or another responsible member of an organization interested in basic income;

– A Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) member;

– An individual basic income advocate.

The questionnaire is quite long and some questions are not easy to answer. Therefore you are strongly advised to study a copy of the questionnaire first so that you can prepare your answers.

We also kindly ask you to forward the questionnaire to people and organisations who are interested in BI or working to promote BI in different countries. Therefore we have drafted a general introductory email about the survey which you can use to introduce the questionnaire to your contacts.

Please visit the following link to complete the questionnaire!

In case you experience any problems or have questions, please contact ubicovidsurvey@gmail.com .

The working group will analyse the responses to the questionnaire and the analysis will be published on a open access site. Afterwards the anonymous data will be made available through UK Data Service for further analysis.

We would like to thank you in advance for your contribution,

Reinhard Huss on behalf of Survey Team