The Economic, Cultural, and Philosophical Effects of Universal Basic Income

Abstract

Universal basic income (UBI) has emerged as one of the primary concepts in modern discussions on how modern society should deal with the increasing economic inequality, precarity, and social shocks associated with environmental degradation and digital technologies. The paper discusses the economic, cultural, and philosophical implications of UBI by reviewing journal articles that were published in the late 1980s to 2025 and that fell within the domains of economics, political theory, sociology, health ethics, environmental studies, social work, and technology governance. The study identifies a number of recurring clusters of argument using co-authorship networks, country collaborations, keyword co-occurrence, and citation patterns, which are economic and redistributive models of UBI; justice-based and citizenship-based accounts of social rights and freedom; and work that connects UBI to environmental governance, health-care rationing, and technological change, especially artificial intelligence and the digital economy. In these strands, UBI is either formulated as an anti-poverty tool or as a tool to decentralize the bargaining power, value unpaid and precarious work, and reclaim social rights, with strong critiques of it authorizing cuts in the social services and recreating existing hierarchies being exercised where it is applied under neoliberal (rather than resource-sustaining) forms of governance. On the whole, the discussion shows there is an institutional hinge between UBI as redistributive material, cultural recognition, and philosophic account of justice and human flourishing; and its real impacts on a particular welfare system are determined by the nature of its ecological environment and technological systems of operation