Temporary basic income

AS the world struggles to cope with the twin crisis of drained public health care systems and flattened economies brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) the other day shared a report that estimates the cost of providing temporary basic income (TBI) to poor and vulnerable segments of the population, suggests ways to fund it, and argues for the need for its immediate roll-out.

UNDP says the report, titled Temporary Basic Income: Protecting Poor and Vulnerable People in Developing Countries, taking advantage of recently available data, “estimates that it would cost from $199 billion per month to provide a time-bound, guaranteed basic income to the 2.7 billion people living below or just above the poverty line in 132 developing countries.”