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A Short History of the Basic Income Idea

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The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income

Part of the book series: Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee ((BIG))

Abstract

While public conditional minimum income schemes gradually superseded private or religious charitable provision for the poor from the sixteenth century onwards, it is only from the late eighteenth century that the idea of providing an unconditional income emerged, alongside the proposal for a one-off capital grant for young adults. Thomas Spence is credited with being the first to propose an unconditional regular income at the local level; and Joseph Charlier with being the first to propose it at the national level. Van Parijs then presents the British debate after World War I, the North-American debate in the 1960s; and finally the academic and political interest in Basic Income that started timidly in Europe in the 1980s and turned into worldwide popularity three decades later.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Philippe Van Parijs

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  1. Philippe Van Parijs
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Correspondence to Philippe Van Parijs .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Malcolm Torry

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Van Parijs, P. (2023). A Short History of the Basic Income Idea. In: Torry, M. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income. Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41001-7_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41001-7_3

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-41000-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-41001-7

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