Basic Income Studies

Basic income is a universal income grant available to every citizen without means test or work requirement. Academic discussion of basic income and related policies has been growing in the fields of economics, philosophy, political science, sociology, and public policy over the last few decades—with dozens of journal articles published each year, and basic income constituting the subject of more than 30 books in the last 10 years. In addition, the political discussion of basic income has been expanding through social organizations, NGOs and other advocacy groups. Internationally, recent years have witnessed the endorsement of basic income by grassroots movements as well as government officials in developing countries such as Brazil or South-Africa.

As the community of people working on this issue has been expanding all over the world, incorporating grassroots activists, high profile academics—including several Nobel Prize winners in economics—and policymakers, the amount of high quality research on this topic has increased considerably. In the light of such extensive scholarship on this topic, the need to coordinate research efforts through a journal specifically devoted to basic income and cognate policies became pressing. Basic Income Studies (BIS) is the first academic journal to focus specifically on basic income and cognate policies.

BIS publishes peer-reviewed research papers, book reviews, and short accessible commentaries that discuss a central aspect of the debate on basic income and related schemes. Contributions to BIS will typically discuss the empirical or normative analysis of basic income but may also include articles on related policies such as citizens’ pensions, stakeholder and sabbatical grants, negative income tax or earned income tax credits, and various job guarantee policies. Articles that discuss the state of modern welfare regimes or aspects of social security or employment regulation in more general terms will be considered provided there are clear implications for basic income research. Although BIS places considerable emphasis on rigorous conceptual development and/or thorough empirical analysis, all articles must be written in clear, non-technical language to ensure that they are accessible to non-specialists.

BIS encourages publication both by established scholars and by researchers at the beginning of their careers.

BIS has an international scope, aims to publish original articles and review essays on basic income in all countries, and strongly welcomes papers from non-Western countries.
BIS Essay Prize

Basic Income Studies awards Essay Prize in collaboration with the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG). A panel of judges chosen by BIS and the co-chairs of BIEN choose the best English-language essay at the BIEN biennial congress and every second USBIG conference (on the years when BIEN does not have a conference). The winning paper is published as the BIS Prize Essay.