Unconditional basic income and social preferences: some evidence from the lab

Eva Jacob, Herrade Igersheim and Magali Jaoul-Grammare

Working Papers of BETA from Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to experimentally analyze the assumed links between individuals’ social preferences and their support for a basic income, based on three possible types of preferences: efficiency-oriented, egalitarian, and maximin. To this end, we designed an original experimental protocol at the intersection of two strands of literature: one well-established, dealing with social preferences, and the other more recent and still emerging, focused on basic income. Our experiment yields two main findings. First, participants identified as having maximin-type social preferences significantly tend to choose a distribution including a basic income. Second, participants identified as efficiency-oriented or egalitarian deviate from their usual preference type in favor of the basic income whenever it provides a maximin type distribution. These two results clearly support a justification of basic income in maximin terms, thus following the theoretical argument put forward by Van Parijs.

Keywords: Basic income; social preferences; experimental economics; maximin; Philippe Van Parijs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B2 B4 D63 P4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2025-46

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