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The freedom not to be employed runs counter to the direction of much recent public policy and political rhetoric (especially in Anglo-American countries, though the policies are international), and this makes stakeholding more palatable than basic income in the current political climate. The effect of such policies and rhetoric is to draw even tighter the long-standing link between employment and citizenship, at the very time when a reassessment has been made possible by changing circumstances. The institution of employment is a barrier to democratic freedom and citizenship in two ways. First, economic enterprises have an undemocratic structure, a point that I shall not pursue here.23 Second, as feminist scholars have demonstrated, the relationship between the institutions of marriage, employment, and citizenship has meant that the standing of wives as citizens has always been, and remains, problematic. The Anglo-American social insurance system was constructed on the assumption that wives not only were their husbands’economic dependents but lesser citizens whose entitlement to benefits depended on their private status, not on their citizenship. Male “breadwinners,” who made a contribution from their earnings to “insure” that they received benefits in the event of unemployment or sickness, and in their old age, were the primary citizens. Their employment was treated as the contribution that a citizen could make to the well-being of the community. Ackerman and Alstott acknowledge this in their criticism of “workplace justice,”24 and their recognition that unconditional retirement pensions would be particularly important for the many older women whose benefits still largely derive from their husbands’ employment record.25 That is to say, only paid employment has been seen as “work,” as involving the tasks that are the mark of a productive citizen and contributor to the polity. Other contributions, notably all the work required to reproduce and maintain a healthy population and care for infants, the elderly, the sick, and infirm—the caring tasks, most of which are not paid for and are undertaken by women—have been seen as irrelevant to citizenship.

(Armstrong is a professor of Gender and Women at Smith College and advocates for equality of women) DOA: 07/17/23 RAN

Marxism historicized social reproduction as labor, arguing that it exists within the relations of capitalism. Behind every capitalist social relation - that of the capitalist and the worker - lay another buried social relation, that of the household – between husband and wife. In the newly privatized household, as a result of inherited gender roles, women did the bulk of all reproductive labor under the control of men. Women, therefore, reproduced workers - including themselves - to return the next day ready to sell their labor power to the capitalist. The use value of this reproductive labor is the workers’ daily and generational renewal. The exchange value of women’s work in the family, however, is nothing at all. The Marxist definition of a class society under capitalism describes how one class controls the means to produce goods. Wealth accumulates to this small group of owners because they hold what Marx calls the means of production – the elements that harness profit, including intellectual rights, labor, land, natural resources, raw materials, markets, and systems of distribution. All of these facets are privatized, all of them owned, since private property anchors a class society. In addition, that ownership class dictates how everyone else can use these resources. Those that own the means of production hoard for themselves the surplus value (profit) from the production of commodities, those socially useful goods that are bought and sold for the reproduction of life. In capitalism, workers receive wages, capitalists take the profit from their work, and those who reproduce daily and generational life receive no recognition for their labor, in wages or in social value. As subjects in capitalism, they are rendered invisible or a burden to the system. Marxist feminism explores how gender ideologies of femininity and masculinity structure production in capitalism. It challenges the primacy of capitalist value to determine social values, both the exchange value in wages and the surplus value of profit by making the use value of reproductive labor visible. Today, Marxist feminism grapples with two central questions: how is the political economy gendered in late capitalism? And, how does the social reproduction of people and communities renew capitalism, rather than support anti-capitalist praxis? The first question addresses imperialism today, what Lenin famously called the highest stage of capitalism. As a system based on profit over people’s needs, capitalism constantly seeks new markets for its goods, what Marx calls commodities, due to the crisis of overproduction – making more things than people can buy. Imperialism refers to the aggressive solution to this crisis that creates new markets and new pools of waged workers to increase the profitability for the owning classes of capitalism. Marxist feminists argue that imperialism in the twentieth and twenty-first century relies not simply on women to solve the crisis of overproduction (as workers, consumers or both), but also on oppressive ideologies of gender. Imperialism captures new markets through the mobilization of extant ideologies of gender oppression to force new workers into waged work, decrease wages and working conditions and to exploit previously untapped resources.

The male bias inherent in (patriarchal) democracy has led to forms of patriarchal structural violence that relegate “women’s issues” to the “private” realm where they become “private matters” that the state does not address. This bias is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the issue of domestic violence, where male bias greatly impairs the ability of police, judges, and lawmakers from recognizing the violent behavior in the family. “The view that ‘as a family matter’ battery is less important, is based on men’s, not women’s perceptions” (Murray & O’Regan, 1991, p. 45). The multiple forms of domestic violence that women suffer have profound physical and psychological effects (Herman, 1992; Kelly, 1993), prompting international calls for domestic violence to be recognized as a form of torture (Copelon, 1994). Governmental support of patriarchal structural violence through its inattention to “private” matters is apparent throughout the world. Until 1991, the murder of a wife in Brazil was legal—it was considered an honor killing and was done to preserve the family’s honor because of a woman’s transgression. In many areas of the world, men are free to rape their wives with no threat of legal repercussions (Mertus, 1995). Other examples of government-sponsored patriarchal structural violence include laws and systems that condone particular forms of violence against women, deny women control over their bodies, provide no assistance with child care and maternity leave, make no attempt to remedy child support defaults, and fail to provide unemployment protection to women who work within the “private” realm in domestic service or farm work (Waring, 1988; Murray & O’Regan, 1991). Because governments rarely address patriarchal structural violence or fight for women’s rights, progress for women is largely made by women working for the recognition and enforcement of women’s rights. As a result, in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Britain, Columbia, India, Sri Lanka, and the United States, violence against women in the home has been identified and some forms of it criminalized (Fineman & Mykitiuk, 1994).

Returning to the issue of the broader promotion of women's financial empowerment, a perspective of the body draws attention to the forms of gendered violence that have been shown to accompany particular forms of financial deepening and attendant collection techniques. Lamia Karim's recent study of Bangladesh is only one of a plethora of studies documenting the link between microcredit and increased violence against women in the household and in public (i.e. through flogging and other means). Violence and aggressive intimidation techniques have also been used by debt collectors against women in the US, who are seen as more likely to submit to aggressive tactics than men, not least because their caring obligations tend to render them less geographically mobile. Debt-related suicide has also been documented across the globe, in countries at a range of levels of economic development. While issues of financial empowerment are deeply intertwined with the promotion of entrepreneurship as an almost unambiguous good, this also fails to capture the specific conditions under which different groups of people engage in this form of work, which has a differential impact on the production of bodies. As Sébastien Rioux reminds us, “Marx was particularly attentive to the ways in which capital is inscribed on the bodies and in the flesh of laborers, documenting as he did how long hours of work, unregulated environment, and dangerous working conditions produced tired, diseased, maimed, unhealthy, overworked, stunted and injured bodies”. Although I cannot fully survey the conditions under which different entrepreneurs labour, it has been well documented by groups such as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor that women in the advanced OECD countries are much more likely to turn to entrepreneurship because of the earning potential it offers than women in the developing world who are more likely to engage in this work due to a lack of alternatives. World Bank research shows that while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of women entrepreneurs of any region, they tend to have smaller businesses (which are often concentrated in the so-called “informal” sector), to be self-employed rather than employ others, to be concentrated in low value-added businesses and to have a lower value of return than men. In terms of finance, this then suggests that the latter group of women are probably more likely to be borrowing to finance their immediate reproduction (as described by Federici above) than the former, where the link is less direct. They are also likely to work under difficult physical conditions. In one study of over 422 women street vendors in South Africa, for example, 54 per cent reported a work-related illness or injury. A significantly larger proportion of self-employed women reported illness or injuries, with 47 per cent reporting having received burns during their work, 12 per cent reporting cuts, 21 per cent reporting headaches and 11 per cent complaining of musculoskeletal problems. Approximately one in four women also reported some form of abuse while working, such as sexual harassment, physical abuse or robbery.

(“What is Patriarchy” ).

By "patriarchal institutions", I refer to the set of mechanisms, practices, beliefs, myths and relationships organizing relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to the distribution of resources, the reproduction of individuals, and the type of societal structures within a given Patriarchy. These institutions are closely linked with one another, creating, maintaining and transmitting inequality from generation to generation. Most sociologists recognize as institutions such social structures as governments, the family, human languages, universities, hospitals, business corporations, and legal systems. I prefer to rename these recognized institutions with more appropriate names such as the Institution of Androcentric Law, the Institution of Misogynist Religion or of Sexist Language, of Malestream Media or Malecentered Science, etc. But I also like to make visible other institutions which patriarchal sociology does not recognize as such, like the Institution of Male Solidarity, of History with Capital H, of Erotic Violence, of Woman-Blaming Myths, of Maleheteronormativity, of Dichotomous Sexual Beings, etc. Many feminists, while not speaking of institutions per se, argue that Patriarchy exists not only in the family but in all structures that allow for control over women, their work and reproductive force. I call these structures patriarchal institutions, because aside from being mechanisms for the perpetuation of Patriarchy, they are also a set of beliefs, practices, myths, relationships, etc. which make sure that Patriarchy is invisible even to those women which suffer the most exclusion or at the most, make sure it is perceived as natural or simply as the way things are and always will be for women. I borrow the idea of the “Institution of Male Solidarity” from Celia Amorós, although she does not call it this and speaks instead of a brotherhood among men that takes place in the constitution of modern Patriarchy. The Costa Rican composer/singer Guadalupe Urbina refers to this institution as “the Knighthood of Mutual Praise”. Marcela Lagarde, Angela Miles, Carole Pateman and many other feminists also believe that men create interdependence and solidarity among themselves, which enables them to dominate women. This does not mean that there is no hierarchy among men. The "appropriation of women's reproductive force" and the control of their bodies and their sexuality comes from radical feminism. For example, Shulamith Firestone discusses how human reproduction, which happens in women's bodies, is legally appropriated and controlled by men and is used to benefit men or to keep women at the mercy of men. Lidia Falcón considers women as a social and economic class, insisting that it is the father and/or husband who enforce the appropriation. Many feminists, such as Maria Meis and others, have spoken of the productive relationship between husband and wife in the modern nuclear family, which is similar to the relationship between a supervisor and a subordinate in the workplace. This subordination occurs in the private space of family because whatever the husband’s produces enters the market (the privileged area of capitalist Patriarchy), while the wife´s production is not. In this way, all of the wife’s work in the non-privileged private space of the nuclear family is invisibilized .

While the relationship between women’s unpaid care work and female labour force participation is implicit in much of the above cited literature, the perspective that a social protection system oriented towards gender equality must account for both of these is sometimes more explicit. In Ecuador, the ‘women-as-carers’ model underpinning social assistance provision in the country may undercut women’s access to the labour market and more robust social security benefits associated with formal employment (). Meanwhile, suggests that not enough has been done to connect the demand for social protection system reform from a gender perspective to an actual policy plan. In response, Rubery proposes a ‘multi-dimensional assessment framework’ to assess social protection and employment system reform by dually accounting for unpaid care and reproductive work and waged work, both of which she argues are ‘central to a gender equality agenda’ (: 520), lest employers be entirely relieved of the responsibility to account for reproduction. Within the perspective that approaches gender and social protection systems through a labour lens, there is also a focus on the gendered dynamics of informality, decent work, and the ‘future of work’. One study that we reviewed examines the role of labour unions in mobilizing around women domestic workers’ access to decent work in Bangladesh, including full access to the national social protection system, inclusive of contributory social security (). The study found that the unions’ focus on national legislation and policy bore some fruit by enabling domestic workers to form collectives, and guaranteeing maternity leave for domestic workers, although implementation of these rights still lags. Others consider rising automation and gig work, finding that while many of the gendered challenges facing social protection systems aren’t novel or unique to ‘future of work’ trends, there is a real risk that these trends exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities, and as such, policymakers would do well to adapt social protection system design to reflect these (). The third main approach we identified suggests that social protection systems should align with human rights principles. argues that the principles of equality and non-discrimination can be better utilized to overcome wide and persistent coverage gaps for women, including through application to various system components and mechanisms such as personal identification systems and targeting mechanisms. In South Africa, applies a human rights perspective to the conceptualization and implementation of the national social protection system as it interacts with labour policy. Focusing in particular on the concept of non-discrimination, the article finds that gendered and racial discrimination in the labour market perpetuates the exclusion of Black South African women from accessing social protection.

A third theoretical entry point is opened up by several recent theoretical analyses of the differential production of bodies. From a historical materialist perspective, the key point here is that insofar as “part of what the creative history of capitalism has been about is discovering new ways (and potentialities) in which the human body can be put to use as the bearer of the capacity to labour”, bodies nonetheless bear markers of difference that differentiate the value of their labour. As David Harvey explains, the differentiation of bodies takes place as they are “marked by different physical productive capacities and qualities according to history, geography, culture, and tradition”, reducing the markers of race, ethnicity, age and gender to perceptions of what particular kind of labour people are able to do. To view this through a feminist lens, however, again draws attention to the specific ways in which the socially and historically constructed valuation of one's reproductive capacities also produces difference along these lines. This is precisely the point made by feminist geographers, who have convincingly argued that the globalising tendencies of capitalism have not led to a simple convergence of experiences but rather to the creation of various continuities and disjunctures, including in the production of gender subjectivities and bodies. Finance plays an important role here, as documented by Katherine Rankin's comparison of the differential production of the “financial subjectivities” of racialised subprime borrowers in the US and feminised microfinance borrowers in the Global South. She shows that while both the subprime and the microcredit markets aim to serve ostensibly poor and underserved borrowers, the former constructs the borrower as “poor, implicitly racialised and incapable of self-care”. In contrast, the “operative subjectivity” of the latter is that of “rational economic woman” who invests wisely, manages debt responsibly and is ultimately capable of ensuring the reproduction of “poverty finance”. While Rankin's work emphasises the production of subjectivities rather than embodied subjects, the two are clearly interlinked. Applying this lens to the TBF agendas brings to light an interesting tension between processes of equalisation and differentiation. That is, the forms of commodification and financial deepening that are promoted by TBF have an equalising effect as more and more women and aspects of production/social reproduction are integrated into the global market and its tendencies towards abstraction. However, on the other hand, they also entail active processes of differentiation. This occurs, for instance, as certain groups of women are ascribed the operative subjectivity of Rankin's “rational economic woman” and “empowered” to engage in various forms of entrepreneurial labour (with all of its attendant embodied effects). However, these same TBF projects, particularly the “womenomics” projects that will be outlined below, mobilise a discourse that erases bodies, as bearers of markers and symbols, from the operation of financial markets. The move towards standardised credit rating and risk assessment models is particularly indicative of the analytical erasure of bodies, as bearers of markers and symbols, from financial decision-making. This move, then, reproduces embodied forms of difference as the andocentrism of these models blinds them to the different conditions under which different groups of people engage in productive/reproductive labour, generally to the detriment of women, to certain racial and ethnic groups, and especially to racialised women.

A crucial aspect of Atkinson’s idea for PI was that certain social rights are tied to social participation. In other words, PI is for those who participate in society. PI bridges the gap between those who think universal social protection and inclusion are the key objectives of the welfare state and those who think the main goal of the welfare state is to promote the socially productive behav-iour of adult citizens. In line with UBI, the core notion of PI is that social inclusion involves the empowerment of human agency (Hogget 2001; Lister 2004).

The results from the BI experiments reviewed above are encouraging for PI. The targeted group of social assistance recipients do not seem to object to participation conditions that enforce reciprocity if the range of activities included in the participation conditions helps them to improve their lives.

The crucial difference between PI and UBI is conditionality. In other words, PI is allegedly based on a principle of reciprocity while BI is not. (The validity of this statement is conditional upon the definition of reciprocity (Goodin 2002), many UBI advocates argue, as will be later illustrated, UBI is fully compatible with reciprocity.) While defining conditionality on grounds of political expedience, Anthony Atkinson’s (1996) seminal article underlined that individuals could contribute to society through more than just paid work. This view is shared with UBI advocates but it stands up against workfare and activation proponents. Here is what Atkinson (1996, 68) said about participation in his original introduction:

in my proposal, the Basic Income would be paid conditional on participation. I should stress at once that this is not limited to labour market participation. While the qualifying conditions would include people working as an employee or self-employed, absent from work on grounds of sickness or injury, unable to work on grounds of disability and unemployed but available for work, it would also include people engaging in approved forms of education or training, caring for young, elderly or disabled dependants or undertaking approved forms of voluntary work, and so on. The condition involves neither payment nor work; it is a wider definition of social contribution.

The second policy design dimension, conditionality, refers to so-called ‘conditions of conduct’ that are attached to benefit receipt (Clasen & Clegg, 2007). The ideal-typical definition of basic income is very clear on this: once entitlement and eligibility are established, the cash payment should be fully unconditional, with no requirements involved whatsoever. However, as discussed in Chapter 1, there have been alternative proposals for basic income varieties that do impose some form of conditionality on the recipients. The best-known of these is arguably the participation income originally formulated by Anthony Atkinson (1996) that is conditional on a number of agreed-upon, socially appreciated activities. In its most comprehensive form, a participation income can cover a very broad range of activities, including caring, training, working, volunteering and so on. In its strictest form, only the performance of paid work suffices to receive the benefit. Although many basic income proponents reject the idea of having any conditions attached to it, and especially any work-related conditions, some may accept such conditional types of basic income because they see them as a promising stepping stone policy towards the fully unconditional version.

This was not the case for Atkinson (1996), who proposed his participation income because he believed it would stand a better chance of being publicly accepted and thus being politically feasible. In fact, there are several signs in existing opinion research that suggest that Atkinson might have been correct. First, the literature on welfare deservingness shows that both control and reciprocity are hugely important normative criteria that people take into account when deciding who should get what from the welfare state (Laenen, 2020; van Oorschot, 2000). More concretely, this means that people are generally less supportive of welfare provisions for those who they see as not having contributed sufficiently (reciprocity) or as being responsible for their own neediness (control). Some even go as far as suggesting that it is a fundamental psychological trait of human beings to categorize help-seekers (and thus welfare claimants) into two distinct categories: first, those who are willing to contribute to the community but have been affected by unlucky circumstances beyond their control (the ‘reciprocators’), and second, those who are unwilling to do so out of laziness (the ‘cheaters’) (Petersen, 2012). In this co-called ‘deservingness heuristic’—which supposedly applies universally across countries, time periods and social groups (Aaroe & Petersen, 2014)—free-riding cheaters should be denied access to any welfare provision, presumably therefore including a basic income. Second, prior studies have shown that work ethics, understood as a set of values centred on the importance of employment in a productivist society, continue to be key in mainstream public opinion (Stam, 2015). Although post-productivist streams (which aim to de-emphasize the importance of wage labour in particular) are certainly emerging, these appear to be undercurrents at present, making it unlikely that the general public will readily accept a fully unconditional basic income (Kozàk, 2021).

A second common objection is that there is a moral hazard to the idea of money for nothing. A lot of people hesitate at giving a guaranteed minimum income to people who don’t want to work. Surely if we had a basic income, even more people would choose to live off the state? Again, in a country wary of ‘scroungers’, that seems like a major obstacle.

The participation income is compromise that overcomes both of these issues. Rather than a true universal and non means-tested payment, it would be conditional. To receive the basic income, people would need to be participating in society. That could be formal work, it could be unpaid work such as care. It could be volunteering, or education, and of course people who were disabled or unable to work wouldn’t be excluded. Anyone who was contributing to society in some way would be eligible to enjoy its rewards.

Atkinson believed that his PI proposal would be immune to the objections of reciprocity and exploitation made against UBI.5 These objections directly point to the unconditional character of a UBI. For example, according to Stuart White, an income that is paid unconditionally violates the principle of fair reciprocity. For others, the unconditional character of a UBI can lead to a situation whereby workers are exploited by people who live without contributing their fair share. Atkinson takes these objections into account and suggests that the political feasibility of UBI programmes depends fundamentally on the incorporation of some form of conditionality.6 More recently, Atkinson also embraced a normative objection against unconditionality.7 His concern here is not only with the political feasibility of UBI, but also with the possibility that unconditionality may produce dependence.

PI recipients are required to perform some socially useful or valuable activity in exchange for receiving this cash transfer. Atkinson does not offer a detailed list of the types of activities that should be included in the list of socially valuable activities. Rather, he provides a very broad and vague list. A key point in his proposal is that a PI does not compel its beneficiaries to enter into the formal paid job market as required by workfare programmes. Instead, a PI rewards socially useful activities that are often performed without any monetary compensation in return.

The concept of participation income (PI) was first introduced by Oxford and London School of Economics professor Anthony Atkinson (1944–2017) in 1996 when he published an article titled “The Case for a Participation Income” in The Political Quarterly (Atkinson 1996). Atkinson’s original discussion on PI was based on two arguments, which challenged the conventional view of citizen’s income as basic income was called at the time in the UK. First, Atkinson wanted to develop BI not as a replacement of social insurance but rather as an instrument to cut dependence on means-tested benefits. For a long time, Atkinson had been a strong opponent of means-testing (Atkinson and Micklewright 1991). PI would complement, rather than replace, existing social insurance benefits by reducing the number of people who must rely on income support or family credit, and by helping low-wage workers who need the means-tested scheme for their earnings top-up. This is an important difference between PI and those catch-all UBI proposals that would replace both means-tested welfare and social insurance. Social insurance would remain the default social security for a large part of the population (Atkinson 1996, 67). PI would also be complementary to a minimum wage (as would UBI in many proposals). Second, Atkinson expressed the belief “that it will be difficult to secure political support for a Citizen’s Income while it remains unconditional on labour market or other activity”. Atkinson pointed to the fact that several countries are anxious to ensure that social security works with, rather than against, the active labour market measures. Later, Atkinson (2015, 221) noted that reciprocity originating from participation criteria is “both intrinsically justified and more likely to garner political support”. This is an important shift in Atkinson’s argument, which will be discussed later in more detail.

At the bottom of both arguments was Atkinson’s concern for inequality and poverty. He devoted his academic career to inequality and poverty studies. After school, Atkinson volunteered in a hospital in a deprived part of Hamburg, Germany, which he later cited as a period when his interest in inequality started (Brandolini et al. 2018). Atkinson also credited the study The Poor and the Poorest, by Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend (1965), as having a significant influence on his career goals. While being impressed by this landmark study of poverty in post-war Britain, Atkinson felt that it did not address what to do about the problem. As a response, Atkinson, a young scholar of Economics, published in 1969 his first book Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security. At the time, poverty was not a fashionable subject for economists.

I wrote to Noah and asked whether he would let me respond on the same platform, where he contributes a regular column. To my delight, he agreed. So I pitched to his editor, copying Noah. But I received no response. Perhaps he’s less interested in the debate than he initially let on. Poor form, by my lights – but oh well. Here are some of the points I would have made.

1. It’s about resource use, not energy

Research over the past decades has assembled evidence for a strong correlation between global economic growth and biodiversity loss. More concretely, gross domestic product (GDP) growth is associated with land use change through intensified natural resource production and harvesting as well as with the expansion of cities and infrastructures, leading to monocultures and habitat fragmentation. Greenhouse gas emissions also increase with GDP and resulting global temperature increases drive many species into extinction. The expansion of global trade routes that accompany global economic growth provide ample opportunities for species to travel into distant areas where they compete with domestic species. Hopes that economic efficiency gains significantly decouple economic growth from resource use have so far not been met. In particular, there is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling of resource use from economic growth could be achieved globally and at the rate necessary to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C. Significant relative decoupling – meaning that GDP rises faster than resource use – has occurred in China, India and South Africa. Nevertheless, resource use still increases globally, while biodiversity decreases.

In response to the persistent challenges associated with material growth, two recent high-level scientific reports call on policy makers to fundamentally re-orient economic policies: the Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in May 2019, and the Dasgupta review, a report commissioned by the British government on the economics of biodiversity, published in February 2021. Both recognise the need to overcome the limited focus on GDP by replacing it with more holistic measures that reflect the state of nature and quality of life. Moreover, they agree on the need for transformative economic change, which the IPBES defines as ‘fundamental, system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic, and social factors’. Required interventions include the elimination of biodiversity-harming economic incentives (e.g. agricultural subsidies), implementing environmentally friendly incentives, adopting precautionary approaches in resource management, and strengthening environmental laws and policies. Yet, both documents do not systematically consider alternatives to growth such as post-growth to address the sixth mass extinction. Post-growth advances that societies operate better without the demand of constant economic growth, prioritize well-being and collaboration and separates good (e.g. education, health) from bad (e.g. weapons, fossil-fuels, fast fashion) growth. There are many post growth futures and many ways of living post growth already exist. One of these futures is degrowth. If development does not follow on automatically from economic growth and degrowth is inspired by many contemporary practices in the Global South, the implementation of the concept is viable but would need to be democratically discussed – like it would have to be done in the Global North.

The original participation income model (PI) was proposed by the British economist Anthony Atkinson in 1996. It is similar to UBI, but obliges people to do something in exchange for the money they receive. These activities can contribute to both the capacity of the community or the individual, like care work or attending language courses. For the most part, claimants know best what activities would be appropriate, and it would allow them to engage in a reciprocal relationship with society.

These activities could include gardening or tree planting, essentially anything that involves restoring biodiversity and bolstering natural solutions to climate change. And it can even replace or be integrated into current labour market policy measures which aim to equip unemployed persons with new skills to reenter work.

Efforts to ‘green’ social policy and the welfare state have ensued (Gough et al., Reference Gough, Meadowcroft, Dryzek, Gerhards, Lengfeld, Markandya and Ortiz2008). However, there has been no major turn against these disciplinary norms. As such, it is unsurprising that social policy can fit reasonably neatly within what is now the main environmental paradigm: green growth (Buch-Hansen and Carstensen, Reference Buch-Hansen and Carstensen2021). While green growth hosts many strands of thinking, growth remains hegemonic; the challenge is to ‘green’ and decouple it from Co2 emissions. There is room for social policy in this paradigm: calls and plans for, inter alia, inclusive green growth, and particular versions of a green new deal, a just transition, and green social investment can and do accommodate social policy, and entail no break with its productivist orientation.

As a future direction for an environmental agenda within the discipline of social policy, green growth cannot adequately address the extent, intensity and velocity of contemporary environmental challenges. This approach adds an environmental ‘tick box’ to social policy analysis but does not fundamentally rethink how we live, work and relate within ecological limits. Contemporary social policy not only fails to address the inter-locking nature of economic, social and environmental challenges to human flourishing; neither is it likely to contribute to decoupling growth from resource use and from rising levels of Co2 emissions. These are the two key elements of decoupling if green growth is to be feasible. As substantiated by Hickel and Kallis (Reference Hickel and Kallis2020) resource use has actually intensified, growing at a faster rate than GDP growth in the twenty first century. Future modelling studies, from the most pessimistic to the most optimistic, predict relative decoupling of resource use from economic growth at best. As for Co2 emissions, the evidence suggests absolute decoupling in some regions but, in the context of continued economic growth, this is insufficient and occurring too slowly to meet carbon budgets that ensure we stay below warming levels of 1.5o or 2o C. As Hickel and Kallis (220:483) conclude ‘there are no scientific grounds upon which we should not question growth, if our goal is to avoid dangerous climate change and ecological breakdown’. These challenges have therefore come to a point under the existential threat the climate crisis poses. To that end there has been nascent interest and recognition of the need for a new disciplinary composite and domain of ecosocial policy (Koch and Fritz, Reference Koch and Fritz2014; Gough, Reference Gough2013, Reference Gough2017).

A fourth objection to PI focuses on the economic consequences of redistributive programme. The most important criticism is that PI could displace workers who would normally take those jobs. PI would work then as a mechanism to obtain people's labour at lower wages than the market rate (Evers 1990, xxxiii). In an answer to this objection, it should be pointed out that a PI programme should be designed to provide services that neither the market nor the government performs. This is, of course, highly contextual, as some tasks that are performed in Community A either through the market or through government services may be performed by neither of them in Community B. Care work is an example of a service that can be carried out through different mechanisms (public care support, private market agents, volunteers, etc.) that vary from society to society. This is true for a variety of services that can be provided through a PI programme. The key point, however, is that in some contexts many important services and activities are provided in only a limited way by either the market or the government. For instance, when the potential for profit is too small, markets may not be the most adequate institutions for addressing social needs. Moreover, even when the market provides some of those services, their costs can be unaffordable for those who need it most.

Addressing educational needs (e.g. literacy instruction, computer instruction, after school programmes for children), planting public gardens, performing neighbourhood cleanups and providing care for the elderly and the homeless are just some suggestions of the kinds of work that markets may not provide but that PI recipients could. In any case, the key for avoiding this type of problem is to find a proper mechanism to elaborate the list of activities that can entitle someone to PI. For example, a list that is designed via a mechanism similar to the participatory budget experiences should take into consideration the demands of union representatives and other stakeholders. As Fabre (2006, 68) points out, large-scale civic service programmes solve this problem by stipulating the participation of union representatives on the boards or commissions in charge of the services. As is the case with most civic service programmes, the feasibility of PI depends on its capacity to consider and accommodate the demands of various interests groups of interference.

Whereas some see universal basic income as a catch-all alternative to both means-tested welfare and social insurance, Atkinson carefully positioned PI as complementary to unemployment insurance and state pensions. Social insurance would remain the default social security for many, enhancing the affordability and political feasibility of a PI that would ‘cut dependence on means-tested benefits’ (Atkinson, Reference Atkinson1996: 67). Atkinson’s key objection to means-testing was its application at household level in male-breadwinner systems. This denies women individual entitlement, a prerequisite for autonomy and equality. Income tests also create stigma and barriers to income support and lend themselves to paternalistic narratives of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor.

Ensuring an absence of stigmatising barriers is an important principle. However, both fiscal sustainability and political tactics may require that access to PI is limited by some financial threshold, while also ensuring stigma is at least mitigated by how any such threshold is applied. A PI income threshold, if not universal, can be designed so that it functions to selectively ‘screen out’ the most affluent citizens rather than as means of reserving support for only those suffering poverty and extreme deprivation. One could, for example, base circumstance thresholds on estimated minimum income or living wage standards, rather than close to the relative poverty line, as under conventional means-tested payments.Footnote 2 PI entitlements could also be gradually tapered on an individualised basis when a person’s (rather than household’s) income exceeds the relevant threshold. So, while a PI need not be universal, it must be widely available, individual, transparent to access, and set at a level that, in conjunction with access to universal basic services, enables people to meet essential needs.

Atkinson’s PI can be seen as a form of BI because it shares many of its design features and because it reaches a considerable stratum of the population. Both UBI and PI combine different risk categories, which means that entitlement is not tied to status as an unemployed person, for example. In contrast to means-tested policies that are assigned to the family, both UBI and PI are paid to individuals. All adults can receive UBI and PI regardless of marital status or their family circumstances. Both UBI and PI are universal redistributive policies which do not target a particular group. Both rich and poor are entitled to PI.

PI seeks the middle ground between, on the one hand, means-tested and targeted redistributive policies, and, on the other hand, universal and unconditional schemes. The contributive component adheres to the former. As with workfare policies, PI is conditional on an individual’s behaviour. However, it shares the universalism of the latter. The income entitlement for most (all adult, able-bodied) individuals is conditional on their contribution. This condition brings in an element of social insurance into the scheme by allowing the recipients to reciprocate the protection given by the scheme.