Research Themes

UBI Bath aims to become the leading UK centre of UBI scholarship and one of the hubs of UBI and related research globally. Its current and emerging research covers a number of interlinked thematics.

UBI Piloting – Design, Evaluation and Ethics

The UBI Bath team have been involved in UBI pilots and experiments for well over a decade and have authored numerous publications on the design, ethics, and impacts of UBI experimentation. The team currently lead the WorkFREE experiment in India, participate in evaluating the Care Leavers pilot in Wales, have advised on the design proposals for an English UBI experiment and the experiment underway in the Peruvian Amazon, led by the international NGO Cool Earth. UBI Bath is building a UBI pilot evaluation unit bringing together the university’s unique combination of expertise in mixed-methods evaluation, UBI, social policy, and policy analysis. Please contact Dr. Neil Howard and Fiona Remnant if you would like to work with us on the design of evaluation of your pilot.

UBI and Climate Change

UBI is widely discussed within the post-growth literature (post-development, degrowth, doughnut economics, steady-state, etc.), and has been for several decades. Echoing claims made by their UBI counterparts, post-growth scholars highlight UBI’s theoretical potential to redistribute social wealth, reduce poverty, increase wellbeing, shift activity from wage-labour to the autonomous sphere, increase social and political participation, and reduce material consumption. However, this progressive vision of UBI’s potential remains under-examined within existing empirical UBI research, which more regularly focuses on the policy’s potential to increase the supply of wage-labour and stimulate economic growth. This thematic of our work aims to begin filling that gap. We are conducting some of the only research anywhere empirically examining links between UBI and climate change and the potential for UBI as a transition policy. We are also bringing scholars working at the intersection of UBI and climate change to map a future research agenda and develop a major proposal. Please contact Sophia Hatzisavvidou and Nick Langridge for further details.

UBI and Health

UBI Bath works on the intersection between UBI and health in two ways. First, with colleagues at Northumbria, we marshal global evidence on the links between economic security and health to assess and advance the health case for basic income. Second, building on the empirical findings of the UBI and cash plus pilots we have run in South Asia, and on evidence from similar trials, we are working to build a world-first policy experiment combining community health insurance, unconditional cash, and community organising. 

UBI and the Future of Work

The idea of UBI as a response to a future where technology has rendered many jobs obsolete looms large in the public imagination. It echoes the last period in which calls for a guaranteed income were prominent in the 1960s and 70s as fears of automation amidst deindustrialisation gathered pace. Yet, for many policymakers and advocates, UBI is a policy tool that responds to more immediate challenges in the labour market: precarity, low wages and weak bargaining power. In this theme, we bring together the future and the present to consider the role of technological change in reshaping labour markets and the consequences for both the politics and effectiveness of UBI. This will include a consideration of similar policies that seek to reduce conditionality and means-testing and/or increase the adequacy and coverage of social security. This team will bring together researchers across multiple disciplines – such as political economy, sociology and management – to build a multi-dimensional perspective on how UBI can provide a lens to our understanding of the labour market. Please get in touch with Joe Chrisp for more details.

UBI and Gender

The general claim made in favour of UBI is that it would give all people a sufficient level of financial security to enable their ‘exit’ from undesirable circumstances. This would enhance people’s autonomy and increase their choice over time-use in all three domains of human activity: work (productive); care (reproductive); and leisure (non-productive) activity.
The potential gendered impacts of such a shift are significant and range from increasing women’s ability to leave abusive relationships to rebalancing the care burden and enhancing their political participation. However, critical feminist scholars argue not only that gender inequality is irreducible to money, but that the intersections between gender and overlapping inequalities are so complex that money alone is unlikely to provide an unproblematic solution. They claim instead that the recognition and value of time and its gendered allocation and how it is spent requires more critical consideration and argue that accompanying initiatives alongside UBI will be necessary for substantive transformation to take place. They further claim that more empirical research is necessary to capitalise on UBI’s feminist transformative potential. We are attempting both to conduct this research and to create space for it by establishing an international network of scholars and activists interested in UBI and gender, to exchange ideas, share ongoing research, encourage attention to gender issues in BI discussions more broadly, participate in inspirational get-togethers. Please get in touch with Maria Franchi for more details.

Ongoing Projects

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UBI in Film

The UBI Bath team have been involved in making multiple films. This Whiteboard Explainer speaks to why UBI could help address poverty in the UK: https://x.com/NeilPHoward/status/1785376746952392818 &#

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BIEN Congress 2024

The Bath UBI Beacon is collaborating with the Basic Income Earth Network to host the world’s largest annual Basic Income Conference in Bath, from August 29th to 31st, this year. The BIEN Congress will

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WorkFREE

WorkFREE brings together scholars, activists and civil society institutions from India and the United Kingdom to pilot what we call ‘UBI+’ in four informal settlements in inner-city Hyderabad, India.

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CLARISSA Social Protection

Like WorkFREE, the CLARISSA Social Protection pilot is a ‘cash plus’ social experiment, run across an entire slim community in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Led by the Institute of Development Studies and partne

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UBI Piloters Network

Research, policy, and activist interest in UBI has exploded in recent years, and this has led to a huge rise in the number of global UBI pilots. Yet for all this amazing growth, until now, no global p

Read More

The Health Case for Basic Income

The Bath UBI Beacon works with colleagues at the University of Northumbria and Autonomy to assess the health case for basic income. Building on funding from the National Institute of Health Research,

Read More

UBIdata

UBI Bath and the Basic Income Earth Network have just launched UBIdata, an innovative new tool with a mission to match reliable information about basic income with a rapidly growing global user base

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The Economics of Basic Income

This project examines the scope for basic income as a necessary element of macroeconomic demand management. From empirical economic data, the research will test the hypothesis that in high technology

Read More

UBI in Film

The UBI Bath team have been involved in making multiple films. This Whiteboard Explainer speaks to why UBI could help address poverty in the UK: https://x.com/NeilPHoward/status/1785376746952392818 &#

Read More

BIEN Congress 2024

The Bath UBI Beacon is collaborating with the Basic Income Earth Network to host the world’s largest annual Basic Income Conference in Bath, from August 29th to 31st, this year. The BIEN Congress will

Read More

WorkFREE

WorkFREE brings together scholars, activists and civil society institutions from India and the United Kingdom to pilot what we call ‘UBI+’ in four informal settlements in inner-city Hyderabad, India.

Read More

CLARISSA Social Protection

Like WorkFREE, the CLARISSA Social Protection pilot is a ‘cash plus’ social experiment, run across an entire slim community in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Led by the Institute of Development Studies and partne

Read More

UBI Piloters Network

Research, policy, and activist interest in UBI has exploded in recent years, and this has led to a huge rise in the number of global UBI pilots. Yet for all this amazing growth, until now, no global p

Read More

The Health Case for Basic Income

The Bath UBI Beacon works with colleagues at the University of Northumbria and Autonomy to assess the health case for basic income. Building on funding from the National Institute of Health Research,

Read More

UBIdata

UBI Bath and the Basic Income Earth Network have just launched UBIdata, an innovative new tool with a mission to match reliable information about basic income with a rapidly growing global user base

Read More

The Economics of Basic Income

This project examines the scope for basic income as a necessary element of macroeconomic demand management. From empirical economic data, the research will test the hypothesis that in high technology

Read More

The Bath UBI Beacon

Brings together researchers from across the University of Bath working on Universal Basic Income and its intersection with contemporary public policy challenges.

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