Since the beginning of the pandemic, almost 40 million individuals in the United States have filed for unemployment. Unprecedented crises call for unprecedented solutions, and they can be an opportunity for social progress. Now more than ever, we need to think creatively and ambitiously about how to reform our safety nets to avoid a social tragedy following this health disaster. Solidarity, empathy, and collective responsibility should guide our policy response and the values of trust, respect, and fairness need to be at its center. Universal Basic Income is now being contemplated and debated throughout the world as a pertinent option and numerous policy leaders in the U.S. have called for variants of UBI, temporary or long-term.

At the Stanford Basic Income lab, we hope that our resources - such as our videos and toolkit - can help inform this public conversation. And we are delighted to announce additional resources that we recently added to our website.

First, the lab is incredibly proud to launch our global map of universal basic income experiments. This tool enables viewers to learn about past, ongoing and future UBI experiments throughout the world, to compare them by key features, research designs, and findings, and to download the data.

Second, we have recently launched a series of articles on UBI and COVID-19. The first engages experimenters in our network on the anticipated impact of this pandemic on UBI research and findings. The second compiles a series of perspectives on the importance of universality as a response to an economic shock. A third article - coming out soon - discusses the importance of maintaining some in-kind benefits and services for a cash response to be effective.

Finally, we recently started a COVID-19 Universal Basic Income Digest, which compiles policy briefs, analyses and events and will be updated on a weekly basis.

We hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy in these challenging times. We thank you for following our work and hope that you will find our resources stimulating.

Kind wishes,

Juliana Bidadanure

Implementing an experiment that is not on the map? Email us at [email protected] and we will add you to the map.

As part of the Basic Income Lab's mission to convene key stakeholders and members of the community around the politics, philosophy and economics of universal basic income, the Lab has put together a living digest of basic income initiatives undertaken during this global pandemic, including new tools, research and online events. We encourage you to explore the new research and events that are added on a weekly basis.

Have an event, analysis or policy tool that touches on basic income or related policies and COVID-19 that you would like to see in the digest? Send us an email to [email protected]

One of the central questions when considering UBI as a policy option is, should a cash transfer be universal - paid to everyone - in response to an external shock (e.g. financial, natural disaster, pandemic)? Often this question leads to more questions: what is the overall objective of the transfer? What is economically feasible? What is fair? How will it interact with existing policies and safety nets? And how will it be implemented?