What we learned about basic income in 2019

The research frontier expanded rapidly

2019 has been a big year for universal basic income (UBI). Web searches for the topic rose over 40 percent since 2018 in the US, and over 130 percent globally. A 2019 Nobel laureate wrote a paper on UBI in the developing world, the World Bank published a book of UBI evidence, and Palgrave Macmillan published the fifteenth and sixteenth books in their academic series on UBI.

This post reviews a slice of the UBI-related research that came out this year. It begins with evaluations of UBI programs and experiments, then considers simulations of UBI policy, followed by studies of related programs like cash transfers, and finally how the public feels about UBI and cash transfers (and what affects those sentiments).

UBI programs

A number of new studies came out on the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), which pays residents between $1,000 and $3,000 per year from returns on oil wealth. Guettabi’s review of research to date summarizes the null effect on employment, positive effects on birthweight and consumption of non-durable goods (e.g. food, not cars) and services, and reductions of childhood obesity and poverty; the review also showed increased income inequality. Feinberg and Keuhn found that entrepreneurship rose after the…