Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the compatibility of UBI with post-development/sustainable welfare, specifically in relation to needs satisfaction. The paper uses data from the pilot to examine changes to human needs satisfaction and suggest implications for UBI as a post-development/sustainable welfare policy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper concerns the compatibility of UBI with post-development and sustainable welfare perspectives, i.e. the rejection of colonial approaches to development and the pursuit of economic growth at all costs and instead designing policies that achieve wellbeing for all within the limits of planetary boundaries.

Specifically, the paper focuses on changes to human needs satisfaction – one of the four key criteria for sustainable welfare policies (Buchs, 2021). Human needs approaches understand needs to be common to all people, across space and time, but the means for satisfying needs as infinitely varied, according to culture, context, resource availability, etc. (Max-Neef, 1991). Such approaches emerged from the post-development literature and are now widely advocated within post-growth and ecological economics.

The paper uses data was obtained through interviews and focus groups with participants of the WorkFREE pilot. Transcripts were analysed against Max-Neefs Humans Scale Development (HSD) framework to specifically identify changes in need satisfaction, as well as changes in the satisfiers and economic goods participants employed in meeting their respective needs. The results will be discussed in relation to UBI’s potential to increase needs satisfaction in line with post-growth and sustainable welfare perspectives – in other words, meeting needs without compromising personal or cultural autonomy and without putting unnecessary pressure on the rest of the natural world.