Basic Income and Human Needs Satisfaction: Evidence from the HudsonUP Experiment

This article analyses qualitative data from the HudsonUP unconditional basic income (UBI) experiment to examine changes to participants’ human needs satisfaction. Human needs theories offer a holistic perspective on wellbeing and are widely employed in the sustainable welfare and post-growth literatures. However, they are under utilised in empirical UBI research. Through an inductive/deductive hybrid thematic analysis of interviews conducted at the baseline and three-year mark, the article examines changes in participants’ ability to satisfy their needs of subsistence, protection, freedom, participation, affection, leisure, understanding, creativity, and identity over the course of the experiment. In doing so, it demonstrates the viability of applying needs-based approaches to UBI research. Findings indicate that the participants’ ability to satisfy their material and non-material needs did increase over the course of the experiment. However, they continued to face barriers to full needs satisfaction. The findings suggest that cash alone is insufficient and proposals for an eco-social UBI – one which contributes to satisfying human needs within ecological limits – must also be accompanied by appropriate supply-side reforms. The article contributes to bridging the gap between theory and practice when it comes to the potential role of UBI in promoting socially just and sustainable welfare in line with post-growth perspectives.