A few years ago, the idea of a universal basic income was widely dismissed as eccentric, as little more than a utopian pipedream. Since then, there has been a significant upsurge in interest, taking the idea from the fringes and up the political agenda in a number of countries.

A universal basic income (UBI) would see a tax-free, unconditional and non-contributory weekly income paid to every individual as of right, irrespective of how much they earned or their work status. Aimed at guaranteeing a no-strings-attached minimum, secure income for all, whatever their circumstances, a UBI would aim to replace at least part of existing national social security systems and would involve a profound revolution in the way income support is organised in most countries.

In the case of the UK, it would constitute a significant extension of the universal model of welfare and, by lowering dependency on means-tested benefits, would relieve the problems of low take-up, the poverty trap and stigma associated with the current system. It would be cheaper to administer, and would save large sums currently spent on processing claims, policing benefit claimants and assessing eligibility.

The idea of a UBI has a long pedigree. The earliest known debate on its essential principles came in 483bc with the discovery of a rich seam of silver in ancient Athenia. The find triggered an intense public discussion about how the potential revenue stream should be spent. One proposal was that it should be distributed among all 30,000 citizens in a regular and equal citizen’s dividend, a move that would have transformed the nature of Athenian society. In the event, the Athenian Assembly voted against the path-breaking idea and, instead, the windfall was used to expand the Athenian navy.

In 1516, the social philosopher, Thomas More, floated the idea of a regular basic income as of right in his fictional fantasy Utopia. In 1797 the British-born champion of democracy, Thomas Paine, called for every person to be paid, at the age of 21, a sum of £15 and for those over 50, the sum of £10. ‘It is a right’, he emphasised, ‘and not a charity’. This sum, he argued, would come from a national fund financed from a charge on the ownership of land, thereby ensuring that part of the benefit of that ownership would be shared among all citizens.

The US-based non-governmental organisation, GiveDirectly, is among the leaders of the cash transfer movement, and the first non-profit organisation devoted exclusively to enabling funders to send money directly to the extreme poor. From its roots in Kenya, GiveDirectly has grown across East Africa while driving public debate about the role cash transfers should play. Rigorous experimental evidence has played a key role in this growth: GiveDirectly was founded in light of the strong evidence that cash transfers were working, and has also conducted a number of randomised controlled trials which have further strengthened that evidence base. These evaluations have shown that such transfers lead to a host of positive impacts, from higher living standards to greater food security and even improved psychological well-being. In addition, old concerns – that the poor would abuse transfers on alcohol, for example, or stop working – have not been borne out in the data.

We are tremendously excited to be launching our basic income initiative, which represents both a major new chapter in our history and a continuation of the principles we have stood for from the beginning. For context, essentially every dollar we have delivered to date has been part of a short-term or ‘lump-sum’ transfer, an immediate transfer of capital which recipients are then free to use or invest as they please. We think this approach makes sense given the evidence that the poor often have access to investment opportunities with very high rates of return: rather than keep the money in our accounts, we prefer to move it out as quickly as possible. Basic income is if anything the exact opposite approach to designing transfers, since it commits to providing small payments in perpetuity.

But we believe that today’s global conversation about basic income represents a unique opportunity. Opinions are incredibly polarised, from sceptics who call basic income ‘a senseless act of preemptive self-sabotage’ to optimists calling it ‘to the 21st century what civil and political rights were to the 20th.

The last few years have seen what the Paris-based OECD has called a ‘remarkable’ jump in interest in a universal basic income. Pilots, of varying forms and ambition, some funded by national governments and others by crowd-funding charities (such as Eight and GiveDirectly) and wealthy industrialists (such as those at Y Combinator), are under way in a mix of developed and developing countries. While the full impact of these pilots will not be known for some years, they are having a galvanising effect on the UBI debate. The pilots – and more may follow – represent, in themselves, a remarkable global social experiment. As well as taking place, more or less simultaneously, in a diversity of nations and continents, they are well constructed, will offer significant evidence on the potential impact of different models of UBI and are being very closely observed.

What binds supporters of a basic income, and many of the contributions in this book, is its potential to plug some of the holes in existing systems of social security, and to offer greater social protection in an era of growing work insecurity and risk. But a UBI also does much more than this. Many contributors – from Insead’s Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor in Chapter 2 to The Leap Manifesto’s Avi Lewis and Katie McKenna in Chapter 12 – talk of how, by encouraging greater choice and strengthening labour’s bargaining power, a UBI would empower citizens and help meet growing public demands for a fairer society. In Chapter 23, Philippe Van Parijs argues that a UBI’s guaranteed income floor – below which no-one would fall – should be central to the renewal of social democracy.

Nevertheless, a UBI is not, as one contributor puts it, ‘a magical solution’. It will help deal with some of the fault lines of today’s economic and social systems, but not all. It is therefore important, as several contributors have cautioned, that the case for UBI is not overstated, and that it is clear that a UBI would need to be accompanied by other reforms targeted at issues like work insecurity, stagnant and falling wages, and the growing concentration of wealth ownership. There are also many different models of a UBI, while actual schemes would need to be tailored to different tax systems, social cultures and stages of development.