A ‘basic income’ is universal, unconditional, and individual.

Universal basic income is the idea of ‘an income unconditionally paid to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement’ (Van Parijs, 1992: 3). Everyone receives a fixed amount of money from the government, regardless of whether they are rich or poor and regardless of whether they do or do not work. While this seemingly utopian idea of handing out ‘money for nothing’ has always been controversial, it is difficult to disagree with the claim that basic income is ‘becoming the idea du jour in the battle over reinvigorating the welfare state’ (De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2017: 298). Though no one can be sure whether basic income is in fact the best idea to organize social policy, it is at least certain that everyone is constantly talking about it – the World Bank, not the most likely supporter of utopian ideas, has just published a major report on the issue (Gentilini et al., 2020).

The academic social policy debate on basic income is well captured in a recent GSP Forum. According to Lacey (2017), basic income’s rejection of both conditionality and means testing stands in ‘glaring contrast with neoliberal poverty tools’. Schulz (2017: 90) expands on this view, adding that basic income might help social security systems to handle issues like the ‘increase of inequality and persistence of gender inequality, recurring economic and financial crises, technological change and globalization and their effects on jobs [. . .] and social protection, demographic evolution, and migration patterns’. Against these claims about positive effects of basic income, Jackson (2017: 103–104) counters that this overambitious ‘great leap forward’ may instead ‘risk jeopardizing past gains, such as income security via full employment, a regulated job market, and decommodification via universal public and social services’. Finally, von Gliszczynski (2017: 98) points out that ‘a mismatch between fundamental ideas in global discourses and the idea of [basic income], and lack of a clear policy model supported by evidence’ leads international organizations to largely neglect basic income in favor of other policies. Judging from the GSP Forum, social policy scholars seem to be about as divided on basic income as everyone else (see Widerquist et al., 2013 for the general debate).

This article remains agnostic as to whether proponents or critics of basic income are right. What is more interesting, I suggest, are current efforts to support the policy model of basic income with empirical evidence. In recent years, governments and non-governmental organizations in various countries have launched large-scale field experiments to assess what empirical effects the introduction of basic income would most likely have. Gentilini et al. (2020: 237–246) provide the most recent overview.

Von Gliszczynski (2017) expresses what is arguably the hope behind much of recent experimentation: that further evidence in favor of basic income might be similarly pathbreaking as the ‘development revolution’ (Hanlon et al., 2010) of social cash transfers in the Global South. After the idea of ‘just giving money to the poor’ had long been rejected by international organizations, it took only about 20 years to turn widely held rejection into almost universal support (Leisering, 2019). With more evidence coming from further experiments, von Gliszczynski (2017: 100) argues, ‘a shift in favor of basic income may become more likely, despite the significant obstacles presented by global discourses’.

While this seems like a reasonable stance, I fear that current basic income experiments will fall short of the above expectations. This is mainly because none of the experiments assess a ‘paradigmatic conception’ (De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2011: 121) of basic income, complying with the definition given above – universal, unconditional, individual payments, no means tests, and no work requirements. This is not to unfairly suggest that any deviation from this model automatically discredits the experiments. It is clear, for instance, that field experiments can at best approximate universalism by covering a cross-section of the population. My point is merely that coming close to the paradigmatic conception would be crucial because claims about positive effects of basic income, according to De Wispelaere and Stirton (2011: 121), ‘really only apply to the paradigmatic form’. Against this backdrop, I show that the extent and diversity to which experiments diverge from the paradigmatic conception of basic income is truly remarkable. Put simply, I argue that since basic income experiments’ deviation from the paradigmatic model of basic income is so large, it is very debatable whether they can find out much about basic income. Before we can seriously engage with evidence from experiments, therefore, the crucial question to be answered is: How are basic income experiments actually conducted, and why are they conducted like that?