Basic income support in Europe: A cross-national analysis based on the European Social Survey Round 8

Abstract

. In recent years, the issue of unconditional basic income has become both an element of a broad discussion among theoreticians and practitioners responsible for public policy and a basis for the experiments aimed at investigating social and economic consequences of introducing this programme; however, there is a lack of empirical analyses focused on public attitudes towards basic income. Based on the data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (n=41,830), we examined the level of support for introducing basic income and identified its individual-level determinants in 22 European countries. Our analysis focused on the systematic differences (both in the level of support for basic income and the strength of the impact of sociopolitical factors) between particular countries and different European regions, namely Western, Southern, Northern and Central-Eastern states. The results confirm that the support for basic income varies according to (a) the region of Europe as well as (b) the key role of the socioeconomic position of the individual.