A basic income must be uniform – pays the same amount to everyone
Guy Standing 17, British labor economist, Professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network. “Basic Income – Its Meaning and Historical Origins.” Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded, Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnf53.4. AJ
The basic income would be paid to each individual as an individual, regardless of marital, family or household status. Thus it would not favour or discriminate against any type of household arrangement. And, unlike benefits paid according to ‘family status’, there would be no presumption of automatic sharing of income within a household, let alone equal sharing, which is often not the case.
The basic income should also be uniform, that is, paid equally to every adult, whatever their circumstances. Some existing state benefits, being family-based, in effect give members of large households a lower amount, assuming economies of scale within families. A basic income makes no such assumption and so avoids unintended discrimination.