Basic income is a popular idea, but small pilots cannot produce generalisable evidence

In June 2023, the thinktank Autonomy announced a proposal for England’s first ever pilot of basic income.1 Subject to attracting funding, the pilot will pay £1600 monthly to 30 people in two English sites for two years, with a control group of 30 receiving no payments. The scale of the response to this announcement on traditional and social media is indicative of how much this idea has shot up the agenda globally in a relatively short period, but unfortunately much confusion prevails about what a basic income really is, how much we can know about its potential effects from the existing evidence, and what is required to evaluate pilots effectively.Basic income has gained traction globally as a proposed solution to increasing income inequality and employment precarity. Since income is widely acknowledged to be the fundamental social determinant of health and health inequalities, advocates argue that a universal basic income would…
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