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Abstract

There is a long-standing debate in academic and policymaking circles about the normative merits and economic effects of a universal basic income (UBI). However, existing literature does not sufficiently address the question of which factors are associated with individual support for a UBI. While a large literature in political economy has focused on individual preferences for existing welfare state benefits, it has not analysed the case of a UBI. Using the eighth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS), this article seeks to remedy this gap by analysing individual support for a UBI in 21 European countries. The findings from logistic regression analyses with country fixed effects are partly consistent with the expectations of previous social policy and political economy literatures. Younger, low-income, left-leaning individuals and the unemployed are more likely to support a UBI. Individuals with positive views of benefit recipients and/or high trust in political institutions are also more supportive, while anti-immigration attitudes are associated with lower support. By contrast, the patterns across occupations are mixed and male respondents appear slightly more supportive. Trade union membership is not statistically significant, perhaps because of contradictory effects: unions typically support new welfare state policies but they also have a key role in many existing welfare state schemes and may worry about individuals’ attachment to the labour market. At the cross-national level, support tends to be higher where benefit activation is more pronounced and unemployment benefits less generous. These results suggest one possible reason why countries with high support for a UBI have not introduced it: the mixed support among the left means a pro-UBI coalition has to draw on right-wing voters who may support it only with lower taxes and/or extensive replacement of welfare state benefits, which in turn may further alienate parts of the left.

Keywords

Electoral politics European Social Survey guaranteed income individual preferences individual support political economy universal basic income

Introduction

There is a long-standing debate in both academic and policymaking circles about the merits and feasibility of a universal basic income (UBI). Recently, a UBI has been proposed by the last French socialist presidential candidate, Benoit Hammon, the populist five-star movement in Italy, a recent unsuccessful referendum on a UBI took place in Switzerland and an experiment is currently underway in Finland.¹

In previous literature, disagreements have focused on the normative desirability (e.g. Cunliffe and Erreygers, 2003; McKay, 2007; Van Parijs, 2004, 2014) and the economic consequences of a UBI (e.g. Berman, 2018; Browne and Immervoll, 2017; Sempere, 1999). Others have discussed its impact on class relations (e.g. Wright, 2004), implementation challenges (e.g. De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2013, 2017) and the budgetary feasibility of a UBI.²

However, we still know comparatively little about public opinion on this scheme, and in particular, the political economy factors that are associated with individual support for a UBI. This is surprising given the large political economy and comparative social policy literatures devoted to understanding individual-level preferences for existing welfare state policies (Clegg, 2007; Emmenegger et al., 2012, 2015; Fernandes-Albertos and Manzano, 2016; Häusermann et al., 2013, 2016; Iversen and Soskice, 2001; Rehm, 2009, 2011; Rueda, 2007; Schwander, 2019; Schwander and Häusermann, 2013; Vlandas, 2013c). This article aims to confront this political economy literature with the case of a UBI to shed light on the conflict lines around a UBI scheme within the electorate.

Which factors shape individual support for a UBI should be of interest to social policy scholars since the UBI differs in two important respects from other welfare state policies. First, it departs from both the means-tested logic of social assistance policies and the contributory logic of social insurance schemes. Second, in contrast to much research on individual preferences towards existing welfare state policies, the UBI does not yet exist. Given its different logic and inexistence, we do not yet know whether the factors driving individual support for a UBI follow the established political economy insurance and redistribution logics, nor whether self-interest plays a role in shaping preferences for a scheme that has no current beneficiaries. A UBI therefore represents a ‘hard case’ for existing political economy and welfare state expectations about variation in individual preferences for this scheme.

Based on existing literature, several relevant factors that may be associated with variation in support for a UBI are identified. First, to the extent that a UBI redistributes income towards the bottom of the income distribution, low-income workers should be favourable to its introduction. However, the redistributive impact of a UBI depends on whether its introduction is associated with changes to existing benefit schemes and taxation. Second, a UBI also fulfils an insurance function, so individuals facing high labour market risks should also be supportive, unless they expect it to replace existing – and potentially more generous – social insurance schemes. Thus, both insurance and redistributive individual motivations yield uncertain predictions for the case of a UBI. Third, while existing benefit recipients tend to support the welfare state, it is unclear whether they should be more or less likely to support a UBI since the latter might replace their benefits. Fourth, I also investigate whether and how support for a UBI is associated with religious belief, anti-immigration attitudes, left–right self-placement and trust in political institutions.

To analyse the factors that are associated with individual preferences for a UBI, I rely on the eighth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS), a high quality and widely used cross-national survey of 21 European countries. Results from a series of logistic regressions are broadly consistent with the conventional wisdom in political economy: the young, low-income workers and the unemployed are more likely to support a UBI, while legislators, senior officials and managers are less likely to support a UBI than other occupations, but trade union membership does not have a consistent statistically significant effect. In addition, lower religious belief, pro-immigration attitudes, left self-placement and trust in political institutions are all associated with higher support for a UBI. By contrast, country-level variation does not conform to welfare state regime typology and instead countries with less generous and more ‘activated’ unemployment benefits exhibit higher support.

The rest of this article unfolds as follows. The next section discusses some theoretical expectations building on existing political economy and welfare state literatures. I then present my empirical strategy and discuss my findings. In the concluding section, I identify several contributions stemming from my findings and offer some thoughts as to why it may be politically challenging to introduce a UBI even in countries with large support.

The political economy of individual support for UBI

There is a large political economy and welfare state literature on the determinants of welfare state and economic policy preferences (e.g. Clegg, 2007; Emmenegger et al., 2015; Fernandes-Albertos and Manzano, 2016; Häusermann et al., 2013, 2016; Iversen and Soskice, 2001; Marx and Picot, 2013; Rueda, 2007; Schwander, 2019; Schwander and Häusermann, 2013; Vlandas, 2013c, 2016). Most of this literature assumes that individuals are at least partly self-interested and therefore that ‘disadvantage can increase support for redistribution’ (Emmenegger et al., 2015: 189; Fernandes-Albertos and Manzano, 2016: 368). The effects of a policy on individuals with different characteristics are then used to derive the preferences of self-interested individuals on these policies.³

Thus, any theorisation of preferences towards a UBI must first identify its key characteristics. A UBI aims to provide all citizens with an unconditional and regular income cash benefit without a means-test or behavioural requirement. While it has a long history, it has attracted renewed interest as a new social policy scheme with the potential to address problems associated with the rise of a precariat (e.g. Standing, 2011) and technological change or environmental degradation (e.g. Birnbaum, 2016: 19, 20). In most formulations, a UBI would make cash and regular (e.g. monthly) payments to all individuals (i.e. it is universal), regardless of their labour market and income status, and without any requirements in terms of past contributions and behaviour (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017).

A UBI therefore differs in at least some ways from all other existing social benefits. Unlike most social insurance schemes, a UBI does not require past contributions, and unlike social assistance schemes, it is not means-tested. These differences make it difficult to automatically transpose the expectations concerning individual support for social assistance and social insurance schemes into support for UBI.

The extent to which existing expectations ‘travel’ to the case of UBI depends on its level, financing and the degree to which it replaces existing benefits. In principle, the amount should be sufficient to ensure an adequate standard of living, but the financing of such a scheme could take different forms. There is a debate concerning the financial viability of a UBI set at a sufficiently high level to achieve its stated aims.⁴ The question of whether a UBI is financed exclusively through higher taxes, through reductions of existing benefits or a combination of both has crucial political implications on the likely support for a UBI by individuals with different characteristics. To derive expectations, I assume that a UBI would be partly financed by taxes, partly replace existing benefits and would be set at a level that ensures a decent standard of living for the recipients, consistent with what the literature on the UBI recommends (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017).

Labour market risk, income and benefit recipients

Individuals facing greater labour market risks tend to be more supportive of unemployment benefit schemes and redistribution as they are more likely to benefit from them (for recent examples see Emmenegger et al., 2015; Fernandez-Albertos and Manzano, 2016; Häusermann et al., 2016).⁵ Various studies rely on different proxies for risks: the seminal insider–outsider framework (Rueda, 2005, 2006, 2007) focuses on labour market contract and status, such as permanent versus temporary contracts and being unemployed, while others rely on occupational unemployment (Rehm, 2009, 2011) – sometimes combined with gender and age (Schwander and Häusermann, 2013). In principle, it is also possible that both approaches are complementary rather than substitutes (Marx and Picot, 2020; Schwander, 2019; Vlandas, 2020). From this literature, we would expect that outsiders – individuals in temporary contracts and unemployment and/or those in occupations with higher unemployment – are more supportive of a UBI.

To the extent that all social benefits do not only have an insurance element but also a redistributive element (Barr, 2005), income has also been shown to be an important predictor of support for benefits and redistribution. Previous political economy literature has found that individuals with lower incomes or in lower socioeconomic groups tend to express stronger support for redistribution (Fernandez-Albertos and Manzano, 2016: 368, Iversen and Soskice, 2001: 884, Rehm, 2009: 868). Individuals with higher incomes should ceteris paribus be less supportive than individuals with low income. Again, this expectation depends crucially on how the scheme is financed, at what level it is set and which social benefits are partly or wholly replaced.

Moreover, the new politics of the welfare state underscored the wide support for existing benefit schemes which makes it very hard to enact retrenchment (Pierson, 1998). Existing benefit recipients may see a UBI as a policy that benefits them given their higher risks and their location in the income distribution, and hence support its introduction. However, this direct transposition of the expectations for unemployment benefits, active labour market policies and other welfare state policies onto a UBI is not straightforward.

On the one hand, the cuts and activation of many unemployment benefit schemes over the last three decades (Clasen and Clegg, 2006; Daguerre, 2007; Knotz and Lindvall, 2015; Vlandas, 2013a, 2017) should make a UBI attractive to those with high labour market risk and incomplete contribution records. Outsiders with limited access to social protection should therefore be supportive of a UBI (see Clegg, 2007).

On the other hand, if individuals expect a UBI to (partly or wholly) replace existing unemployment benefit schemes, and to the extent that these have remained more generous than what a UBI could offer, existing benefit recipients and those with higher labour market risks could then be more opposed to a UBI. In this view, those who do not – and are not likely to – receive benefits could see a UBI as a way of reducing the overall size of transfers to recipients: if the latter receive lower amounts while those who finance a UBI are also eligible, low-risk individuals and non-recipients could be better off and support a UBI.

Equally, if the introduction of a UBI leads to cuts in existing social benefits, even recipients who would overall benefit from its introduction may oppose it. Benefit recipients tend to fight cuts and retrenchment much more strongly than they support possible expansion (Pierson, 1996: 146). Thus, existing benefit recipients may not be significantly more supportive of a UBI and could even be opposed to a UBI if it is seen as part of a retrenchment of their benefits.

Education and skills

Another literature which is related to both labour market risks and income focuses on the level and specificity of education and skills (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Iversen and Soskice, 2001; Rehm, 2009: 859, 871). Individuals with higher skills should have higher (current and future) income and tend to be less exposed to labour market risks as well as better able to find another job. Highly skilled individuals, whether captured by their level of education or their occupation, should therefore be less supportive of a UBI.

However, because skills and labour market status are analytically distinct, it is possible for highly educated workers to also be outsiders, in the sense that they face high labour market risks. As a result, the effect of labour market risk on support for the welfare state and redistribution could be even higher among high-skilled and/or highly educated individuals (Häusermann et al., 2015).

Moreover, several authors have argued that in addition to the level of education and skills, the degree of skill specificity – understood as the ability that workers have to fully utilise their skills in a different company/sector – may be crucial to capture labour market risks. Workers with specific skills experience higher risks than workers with general skills because the investments they made in acquiring these specific skills will be lost if they lose their job and cannot find another one that also utilises these specific skills. Workers in these highly specific skills occupations, such as craft workers, are in turn more likely to demand social insurance to protect their investment (Emmenegger, 2009; Estevez-Abe et al., 2001; Iversen and Soskice, 2001; Lamo et al., 2011).

As with labour market risks and income, the expectations may be more mixed for a UBI. The permanent and unconditional nature of a UBI may allow recently unemployed individuals with very specific skills to hold out until they find a job that optimises their skill set (the ‘duration element’ of benefit structure). However, unemployment benefits often have fixed replacement rates (up to a level) and workers who have highly specific skills may not favour a UBI if they believe this may replace more generous existing unemployment benefit systems (the ‘level element’ of benefit structure). Overall, the likely net effects of occupations and education are ambiguous.

Age and gender

Younger individuals as well as women in many countries are more likely to be outsiders and to face high labour market risks (e.g. Esping-Andersen, 1999; Schwander, 2019: 17; Schwander and Häusermann, 2013). With respect to age, younger people are disproportionately affected by precarious, low pay and low-quality jobs, which can in turn also feed into higher labour market risks in the future. They are also less likely to be protected by existing social protection arrangements (Bonoli and Häusermann, 2009; Emmenegger et al., 2012). Yet, it is also possible that because deindustrialisation has affected many older low-skilled men (Iversen and Wren, 1998), the latter may find it difficult to find another job if they become unemployed. Thus, one must allow for age to have a non-linear effect on support for a UBI if both young and old individuals face higher risks.

With respect to gender, the unconditional nature of a UBI should be particularly appealing to women. First, care responsibilities tend to fall predominantly on women. As Häusermann et al. (2016) note, ‘many women . . . work full time at a young age before (temporarily) withdrawing from the labour market for child rearing and possibly re-entering the labour market for a part time job’ (p. 1047). Second, partly because care often has adverse consequences for future career evolution in the labour market (see Iversen and Rosenbluth, 2011), women are more likely to have less stable career paths and to be in more precarious employment. Third, the combination of care responsibilities and non-standard employment often leads to less effective protection by existing social insurance systems, either because they face new social risks that are not well covered by most welfare states and/or because they are less able to adequately contribute to social insurance schemes.

Overall, both age groups (young and old) and women should therefore be more supportive of a UBI than middle-aged male respondents. Age and gender will only have a separate effect on support if they capture risks and insecurity that cannot be controlled for by other variables such as labour market risks, education and so on. This could be the case if the current quality of a job and the future risks and insecurity which an individual faces are captured by age and gender in ways that are not (or cannot be) captured by other variables.

Trade union membership

The expectations for trade union membership are also complex. Most studies show that trade unions and their members are more supportive of welfare state benefits and regulations, both for ideological and strategic reasons, and strong trade unions have played a key role in phases of welfare state expansion (Davidsson and Emmenegger, 2013; Huber and Stephens, 2001). However, more recent debates question whether trade unions ignore the interests of outsiders (e.g. Rueda, 2006, 2007) or whether they may under certain conditions attempt to protect them (Benassi and Vlandas, 2016; Clegg and Van Wijnbergen, 2011; Frege and Kelly, 2003; Vlandas, 2013b).

In the case of a UBI, trade union members could in principle oppose the scheme if they believe it may undermine existing social insurance systems where unions continue to play an important role. Indeed, several trade unions in Europe have expressed doubts about a UBI (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017; Vanderborght, 2006). For instance, Finland’s largest trade union⁶ and the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT)) in France⁷ have voiced concerns – if not outright opposition – to a UBI.

Attitudes

So far, the discussion has focused on variables that are to a large extent exogenous to preferences for a UBI. However, a large literature also explores the association between attitudes and welfare state policy preferences. The first concerns the role of partisanship. The position of the left on a UBI has been ambiguous depending on their reading of the source of the unfairness in capitalism (Van Parijs, 2017). There is also a debate about whether left-wing parties and their supporters are favourable to policies that target outsiders (Bradley et al., 2003; Huber and Stephens, 2001; Palier and Thelen, 2010; Rueda, 2007). One could further expect differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ left parties (Greens and left libertarian parties) with high-skilled outsiders (Häusermann et al., 2015) such as highly educated temporary and precarious workers being more likely to support new left parties than unemployed outsiders (Marx and Picot, 2013; Schwander, 2019: 22).

Second, a large literature has argued that the extent of – and negative attitudes towards – immigration, multiculturalism and ethnic fractionalisation may undermine the political support for redistribution and tends to be associated with lower welfare state spending (e.g. Alesina et al., 2001: 230–232, Eger and Breznau, 2017; Garand et al., 2017; Rueda, 2018; Senik et al., 2009; Sumino, 2014). In this article, I focus on anti-immigration attitudes because the ESS includes questions about both these attitudes and support for UBI, and I expect that the universal nature of a UBI would make those with such attitudes oppose a UBI since it would also benefit immigrants.

Third, previous studies have found that a high quality of government is linked to support for social protection and, in turn, greater welfare state spending (Rothstein et al., 2012). Greater trust has been linked to more willingness to pay taxes, more support for redistribution and larger welfare states, although the conditions under which this association holds are debated (Algan et al., 2016; Bergh and Bjornskov, 2011, 2014; Bjornskov and Svendsen, 2013; Edlund and Lindh, 2013; Habibov et al., 2018). The higher trust in institutions can be expected to increase the willingness of individuals to pay the taxes necessary to finance a UBI and their confidence in the ability of the state to administer such a universal benefit. Finally, previous literature shows religious beliefs affects support for welfare state benefits (e.g. Algan and Cahuc, 2006; Pavolini et al., 2017). More religious people could be expected to support a UBI since it provides everyone with a minimum to survive on.

Country-level variation

In addition to these individual-level expectations, previous studies suggest that national-level policy arrangements also shape individual policy preferences. There is, for instance, a large literature suggesting that country-level differences in policies follow established welfare state regimes and varieties of capitalism typologies (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Hall and Soskice, 2001), and systematic policy differences across countries can be expected to shape the policy preferences of the population (e.g. Gelissen, 2000; Jaeger, 2006; Mau, 2004; Svallfors, 1997). Unlike existing social policies that can be expected to enhance their own support, a UBI does not exist and therefore one must identify which welfare state policy is most likely to shape support for a UBI. Because a UBI provides a minimum income to everyone regardless of income and labour market participation, one particularly relevant social policy is unemployment benefits, which decommodify the unemployed (cf. Esping-Andersen, 1990).

More specifically, one can expect that the generosity and activation of the unemployment benefit system shape views about whether everyone should receive an income regardless of work, and to influence the perceived or real need for additional decommodification through new policies. Expectations about the association between unemployment benefits and UBI support could operate both ways. On the one hand, countries with more generous and unconditional unemployment benefits could have electorates that tend to be more supportive of unconditional decommodification and this support could also apply to a UBI. On the other hand, it is precisely in countries with generous and unconditional unemployment benefits that the need for a UBI is lowest, since these existing benefits already redistribute income and address labour market risks more effectively. Electorates in countries with generous and unconditional unemployment benefits may also experience the UBI as a threat to existing schemes. In this latter case, countries with more generous and unconditional unemployment benefits would exhibit lower support for a UBI.

Empirics

Data and methods

My empirical analysis of individual preferences for a UBI relies on the 2016 wave of the ESS (ESS, 2016), which includes a question about this scheme. Respondents were asked whether they are ‘against or in favour of a UBI scheme’ being introduced in their respective country, which ‘some countries are currently talking about’. The specific characteristics of the UBI are specified in the question which can be found under Figure A1 in the Supplemental Appendix.⁸

Respondents choose an answer on a 4-point scale with no neutral option: 1 = strongly against; 2 = against; 3 = in favour; or 4 = strongly in favour. There are about 32,000 responses to this question with 2600 missing values. Overall, 47 percent of respondent are in favour or strongly in favour of a UBI, while 46 percent are against or strongly against and 7 percent of responses are missing (refusals, don’t knows, missing). The dependent variable is transformed into a dichotomous variable taking value 1 for support (or strong support) and 0 if respondents are against or strongly against. The variable is coded as missing if respondents did not answer, refused to answer or chose ‘don’t know’.

The following variables are included in the analysis: gender, age, education, different measures of outsiderness (being unemployed, on a temporary contract and occupational unemployment), income (level and source), trade union membership, occupations, left–right self-placement, trust in institutions, anti-immigration and religious attitudes. Note that given the greater endogeneity concerns with respect to attitudes, the baseline results only includes left–right self-placement (and are robust to its exclusion), while the other three attitudes are included separately in additional regressions reported in the Supplemental Appendix. At the country level, two independent variables are included: the first concerns the unemployment benefit replacement rate, which captures the generosity of benefits when an individual becomes unemployed; the second captures the degree of activation of the unemployment benefit system (for specific coding, description, source and descriptive statistics, see Table A1).

Factors associated with individual-level support for a UBI

The results from a logistic regression with country fixed effects to account for unobservable heterogeneity at the country level are presented in Figure 1. For each point estimate of each coefficient, the lines represent the 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The coefficients are semi-standardised, that is, they have been divided by the standard deviation of their respective independent variables, and hence are comparable in terms of their magnitude. I also discuss predicted probabilities for different values of the independent variable under consideration while keeping other variables at their mean.

Figure 1.

Factors associated with individual-level support for a UBI in Europe.

First, male respondents are more supportive of a UBI, which is at odds with our expectation that female respondents would be more supportive given their greater care responsibilities, labour market insecurity and non-standard career paths. The difference in predicted probability is small (52% for males vs 49.8% for females). This small but surprising effect could be driven by the fact that many differences between men and women are captured by controls in this model. However, the coefficient is always positive and its significance and magnitude actually increases as more controls are included (Table A17).

Second, the coefficient for age is negative and statistically significant, which indicates that younger respondents are more supportive (this holds regardless of whether the quadratic term is included – see Table A4). An 18-year-old individual has almost a 60 percent probability of supporting a UBI compared to 47 percent for a 65-year-old person. This is a sizable effect consistent with the notion that younger respondents face much more current and future labour market risks and are less protected by existing welfare state policies. By contrast, respondents who are above 65 years old are likely to worry about whether a UBI would replace their pensions.

Third, income is statistically significant and negatively associated with support for UBI, consistent with our expectations, and its effect is large: an individual in the bottom income decile has a 56 percent predicted probability of supporting a UBI compared to 46 percent for someone in the top 10 percent. Thus, the income conflict dimension over welfare state policies also applies to a universal unconditional scheme that does not yet exist, such as a UBI.

Fourth, I also find partial support for the importance of risks and insider–outsider differences. Unemployed respondents are more supportive of a UBI than the employed and the difference in the predicted probability of supporting a UBI is substantial: 58 percent for the unemployed versus only 51 percent for the employed. By contrast, the coefficient for temporary workers is not statistically different from permanent workers, even with 90% CI. Another measure of labour market risk is the occupational unemployment rate (see Rehm, 2009, 2011), which cannot be run jointly with occupational dummies since this would result in collinearity. I therefore rerun my analysis without occupational dummies and find that occupational unemployment is positively associated with support for a UBI.⁹ The predicted probability of supporting a UBI increases from 51 percent in the occupation with the lowest unemployment to nearly 58 percent in the occupation with the highest unemployment (Figure A9).

Fifth, the only clear result concerning occupations is that senior legislators and managers (the reference category) are less favourable to a UBI than other occupations: they are predicted to support a UBI with 45 percent probability compared to 54 percent for the elementary occupation, which has the highest support. While the very large coefficients for elementary, operator, service and craft occupations suggest that low- and specific-skill workers tend to be more supportive, the very high coefficient for professionals is harder to reconcile with previous literature. There might be material as well as ideational factors leading to this surprisingly high support for UBI among this highly-skilled occupation.

Sixth, education is positively associated with support for a UBI, although the effect is small: an individual with 5 years of education has a 49 percent predicted probability to support a UBI compared to 53.5 percent for someone with 25 years of education. This result is in line with the notion that individuals with low education face higher risks and lower incomes, but that when controlling for these differences in risk and income, highly educated individuals are favourable to a UBI for other reasons. This is exactly what a stepwise addition of controls reveals: the coefficient is initially negative and statistically significant when controlling for gender, age and income, but turns positive once controlling for source of income and occupations (Table A14). Next, trade union membership, receiving income from self-employment, pensions or farming are not statistically significant.

Finally, with respect to attitudes, the results are also broadly consistent with prior expectations. Respondents who identify as right wing are more opposed to the scheme and the effect is substantial: the predicted probability of support is below 41 percent for the most right-wing respondent compared to above 61 percent among the most left wing. Consistent with theoretical expectations, individuals with anti-immigration attitudes and lower trust are less likely to support a UBI. However, contrary to expectations, individuals who are less religious are more likely to support a UBI (for more details on how these variables were created and to see the full results, please refer to section 2.7.3 in the Supplemental Appendix).

Robustness checks

To increase confidence that these individual-level findings are not the result of model specification in terms of the variables that are included or excluded, I report in the Supplemental Appendix a series of results when each independent variable is initially included in the model by itself and then only more variables are included step by step (Tables A13–A21). The coefficient for age is negative and statistically significant in all but one specification, that is, when all variables but sources of income are included (Table A13). When not controlling for source of income and occupation, education has a positive and at times statistically significant coefficient because it is picking up the material effects of education, but when controlling for sources of income and/or occupation, the coefficient is negative and statistically significant (Table A14).

The effects of income and left–right self-placement are the same regardless of which variables are included (Table A15 and Table A16). Gender only has a statistically significant effect when controlling for income and/or source of income and/or occupations (Table A17). Union membership is only statistically significant when controlling only for gender, which suggests it is not membership per se but the different characteristics of members and non-members, respectively, that account for differences (Table A18). Occupations are always statistically significant regardless of which variables are included (Table A19). Receiving unemployment benefits is always significant, whereas the effects of being self-employed, a farmer or a pensioner only appear statistically significant when income is not included (Table A20). Finally, the coefficient for being on a temporary contract is often but not consistently significant (Table A21).

Using alternative measures of labour market status does not change the results. The coefficients for having been unemployed in the past 5 years (Figure A11), being unemployed and actively looking for a job (Figure A13) or not actively looking (Figure A14) are all significant and positive. More subjective measures of labour market risks such as self-assessed likelihood of having money problems (Figure A10) or of becoming unemployed (Figure A12) are also significant and positively correlated with UBI support. Next, excluding or including previous trade union members with current trade union members, or coding union membership as an ordinal variable (0 = non-member, 1 = past member, 2 = current member) does not change the results (Figures A34–A37).

I also explore the robustness of results to different estimation methods and model specifications. First, if I remove the country fixed effects, the statistical significance of gender and age falls below the 5 percent threshold but the other results remain similar (Figure A3). The patterns of significance depending on which variables are included is the same when including versus excluding country fixed effects for education (Table A5), income (Table A6), left–right scale (Table A7), occupations (Table A10) and sources of income (Table A11). Excluding country fixed effects changes the results for two variables: trade union membership, which becomes more consistently negative and statistically significant at 10 percent level (Table A9), and temporary workers which are now always more likely to support UBI (Table A12).

Second, only education loses statistical significance at the 5 percent level (relative to results in Figure 1) when clustering standard errors while keeping country fixed effects (Figure A5). The coefficients for age, being right wing and income are consistently significant and negative regardless of specification (Tables A22, A24 and A25). Being a male respondent is significantly associated with higher support although this is contingent on controlling for occupation (Table A26). The almost always non-significant result for union membership and significant results for occupations and being unemployed are the same as before (Tables A27–A29).

Third, income, unemployment, occupations and left–right self-placement remain statistically significant when rerunning the analysis using an ordinal logistic regression, but age, gender and education do not (Figure A7). The results for occupations, income, left–right scale and unemployment are robust to excluding other independent variables (Tables A33–A39). If we run instead a multinomial logistic regression (Table A3), the results for income, unemployment and left–right placement continue to suggest the same patterns of support and opposition. By contrast, the results for age and gender are not stable. Temporary workers now appear less likely to be ‘strongly against’ but the effects for being ‘against’ and ‘strongly in favour’ relative to reference category ‘in favour’ are not statistically significant. Trade union membership only has a statistically significant effect on ‘strong’ categories: they are more likely to be ‘strongly against’ and less likely to be ‘strongly in favour’.

Finally, if we remove country fixed effects and run instead a random intercept multilevel logistic regression, all the results from Figure 1 remain the same (Figure A8). Tables A40–A48 suggest that the results for age, income, left–right self-placement, occupations and sources of income are robust to changing which variables are included in the model.

Country-level variation

Given a low N at the second (that is, national) level, what follows should be seen as a preliminary set of exploratory analyses concerning the association between UBI support and two key features of unemployment benefit systems: generosity and activation. There is significant cross-national variation in support for UBI (Figure A2) which does not seem to conform to the expectations from either welfare state regime theory or varieties of capitalism. Indeed, countries with high average support for a UBI include central and eastern European countries such as Lithuania and Hungary, but also continental European (e.g. Belgium), southern European (e.g. Portugal, Italy) and Scandinavian (e.g. Finland) countries, while there is low support in countries as diverse as Norway, Switzerland, Austria and Spain.

Inspecting the cross-national bivariate association between the average level of UBI support and the net unemployment benefit replacement rates for a couple reveals a negative relationship (top left-hand corner of Figure 2). Using the gross replacement rate or the rate for a single individual reveals a similar picture (Figures A38–A41), whereas the correlation with coverage rates tends to be weaker and driven by outliers (Figure A44). Crucially, the negative relationship is negative and statistically significant when controlling for relevant individual characteristics (bottom left corner of Figure 2) and the results are the same if we use instead gross rates (Figure A57).

Figure 2.

Support for UBI, unemployment benefit generosity and activation.

Support is also higher in countries where unemployment benefits have stricter sanction rules (top right-hand side of Figure 2), a proxy for activation and the results are similar if we use instead a measure of conditionality as an alternative proxy for activation (Figures A42). The relationship is positive and statistically significant when controlling for relevant individual characteristics (bottom right corner of Figure 2) and it is the same if we use instead overall conditionality of the benefit system as a second alternative proxy for activation (Figure A56).

Overall, these findings suggest that individuals are ceteris paribus more supportive of a UBI in countries with comparatively less generous unemployment benefit schemes that also activate recipients with conditions and sanctions. In other words, respondents are more supportive if the current unemployment benefit system does not provide adequate protection, which is a function of excessive activation and/or insufficient generosity. This is in contrast to the dynamics in the case of existing welfare state benefits where higher generosity is associated with higher support.

Discussion and conclusion

Using the 2016 wave of the ESS, this article represents a first step in addressing a joint gap in the basic income and political economy of welfare state preferences literatures. The former has tended to pay comparatively less attention to the question of individual support for a UBI, while expectations from the latter have not been systematically tested in the case of a UBI. This article has focused on testing several key expectations from existing political economy and welfare state scholarship on the factors that are associated with higher individual-level UBI support.

The empirical analysis reveals that the cross-national variation in support for a UBI does not conform with existing welfare state typologies. Instead, support appears higher in countries with less generous unemployment benefit schemes that also activate recipients through greater conditionality and/or the use of sanctions. The finding that countries with less developed and/or more activated unemployment benefits exhibit higher support for a UBI contrasts with findings that support for existing welfare state policies is higher in countries with more generous welfare states. Future research should further explore other dimensions of welfare states and rely on samples with more country-level variation and observations.

The individual-level findings suggest that low-income individuals, the unemployed, workers in operator and elementary occupations and left-leaning individuals are more likely to support a UBI. Gender and education have significant but small effects on the probability of supporting a UBI, while predictive power is strongest for age, left–right self-placement, income and occupations. Being less religious, having high trust in political institutions and having favourable immigration attitudes are associated with higher support for a UBI. These individual-level findings are mostly consistent with previous research on the individual preferences for the other two dominant existing sets of welfare state policies – social assistance and social insurance. Taken together, these findings make four contributions to the existing literature.

First, previous literature has shown that self-interest is crucial to identify the conflict lines in the support for existing social policies. However, the distributional consequences of a scheme that does not exist, such as the basic income, are less clear than for other schemes that are already in place. This lower clarity in turn makes the basic income a hard case for self-interest to shape individual policy preferences because it should be more difficult for individuals to assess the net effects of a basic income on them. The fact that the expectations from this literature travel even to a scheme that does not yet exist is an important finding because it further demonstrates the explanatory power of self-interest for individual attitudes towards welfare state policies.

Second, the UBI represents a particularly relevant case on which to apply these theories for an additional reason related to its ideological ambiguity and the complexity of its possible effects. As a result of the latter, one cannot posit ex ante whether respondents see a UBI as a redistributive policy, partly because the net effects of a UBI would depend on its precise implementation and partly because the scheme itself finds its origins among both protagonists and opponents of the welfare state. The empirical analysis shows that the scheme is seen as both redistributive and protective, since respondents with high labour market risks, low income and/or of a left-leaning persuasion support it.

Third, these findings contribute to a literature on the UBI that has almost exclusively focused on its normative desirability as well as its economic feasibility and impact on individuals’ labour market participation (for an excellent and comprehensive review, see Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017). This study therefore contributes an extensive empirical analysis of variation in individual support for a UBI.

Fourth, these findings shed light on the political feasibility of a UBI and, by doing so, open up further research avenues. More than twenty years ago, Korpi and Palme (1998) argued that more targeted benefits are less effective at reducing poverty because their targeted nature saps the political support for the benefit. However, this then leads to the question of why, despite its universal character, a large share of the population is favourable to a UBI only in some European countries, and why in countries where there is large support for a UBI governments have so far not introduced it.

One reason could be related to the politics of welfare state under (perceived or real) austerity. Another reason concerns so far unidentified constraints on the political supply which could explain why political parties are not competing on UBI despite large latent demand by the electorate. The findings of this article suggest a third – speculative at this stage – possible reason on the demand side to make sense of this puzzle. The multiple conflict lines and the non-significant association between trade union membership and support for a UBI reveal a complex relationship between the left and UBI. Those who self-identify as left leaning are more supportive of a UBI, but there may be splits within the left camp. Trade union members are not unambiguous supporters, even though low-income workers and those with high labour market risks tend to be more favourable to a UBI. By contrast, the pro-immigration and pro-welfare attitudes¹⁰ associated with the libertarian left are correlated with support for a UBI.

Thus, future research could further explore whether left-leaning UBI supporters may not be a sufficiently large group in the absence of clear support by union members, so a pro-UBI coalition has to draw on right-wing parts of the electorate. One possible challenge for UBI advocates might then be that those who support a UBI on the right may do so for quite different reasons; for instance, because they expect it to lead to only very limited tax increases and extensive replacement of welfare state benefits that are currently supported by parts of the left.

In other words, the fact that a UBI can mean different things to different people may explain both the fairly high support for the scheme in some countries and the difficulty in finding a politically viable coalition to support its introduction when the financing of a UBI and its interaction with existing welfare state benefits have to be specified. Thus, the wide political appeal of the UBI might also be its greatest weakness: because many people support a UBI for very different reasons, the basis of support are politically and ideologically fragmented and may therefore be irreconcilable.

Supplemental Material

Vlandas_Appendix – Supplemental material for The political economy of individual-level support for the basic income in Europe

Supplemental material, Vlandas_Appendix for The political economy of individual-level support for the basic income in Europe by Tim Vlandas in Journal of European Social Policy

Footnotes

I would like to thank Michael Ganslmeier for excellent research assistance. For comments on previous versions of this manuscript,I am also grateful to the participants of the ESPANET and Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) conferences in 2018,a 2019 workshop in Leuven,Hanna Schwander,the anonymous reviewers and the editors of JESP.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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