Economic Security for All: The Feminist Case for a Basic Income in the United States

A feminist case for why a basic income should be implemented in the U.S.—and how it can be achieved.

Providing economic security for all is the unfinished business of the New Deal and Great Society programs of the 1930s and 1960s. These first two “big bangs” of social policy development were based on the recognition that economic security in a capitalist economy can only result from a combination of earned income, family resources, and income support organized and distributed by the government. But our current social policy programs have been designed with male life patterns in mind, undermining the economic security of women and others with disproportionate responsibility for care. These policy programs impose higher taxes on working mothers, disincentivize women’s employment, penalize marriage for those with low incomes, and reinforce gendered responsibility for paid employment and unpaid care.

Economic Security for All joins feminist research on social policy with a feminist perspective on basic income to propose gender-inclusive reforms to these policy programs. Almaz Zelleke argues that reforms in the direction of an unconditional, universal, and individual basic income are the key to creating gender-inclusive social policy in the U.S., and to accelerating stalled progress toward gender equality in the U.S. and other capitalist economies.

The author lays out a series of steps that individually advance the gender-inclusion of specific policy programs and together describe a modular and incremental pathway to a full basic income, for both the US and beyond.