Date of Award

Spring 6-14-2017

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Global Honors

First Advisor

Ali Modarres

Abstract

The increasingly automated nature of manufacturing and service industries poses difficulties a majority of the world’s employed population. This creates an automative industrial revolution driven by advanced computing systems and increasingly independent robotic technologies. Losing employment in industrial revolutions such as this one poses threats to the established population. The replacement of obsolete work with new, more valuable work has not been observed in this case, presenting the problem of extreme unemployment to the nations of the world that was not a problem in past industrial revolutions. In order to counter the effects of mass unemployment, several groups have proposed the use of Universal Basic Income plans instituted on national or statewide levels. These plans have traditionally been supported due to their cost efficiency and fairness of their systems for all members of a society.

This thesis analyzes the Universal Basic Income tests and plans implemented throughout the world and proposed in the literature in order to determine the effectiveness of these programs. While the benefits are widespread and effective at reducing poverty more effectively than traditional welfare programs in a multitude of situations, significant research is still required in both increased size and scale to analyze the social, economic, and poverty-reducing effects of these plans.

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