Tracing the Scholarly Dialogue on Universal Basic Income: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis

Universal Basic Income has recently become a buzzword debated by policymakers, economists, and researchers over the last years. Universal basic income is an unconditional, guaranteed income given to everybody, and some of the other important objectives that it seeks to meet are economic inequality, poverty, and the automation and technological effects. The following bibliometric analysis describes the outline of scientific publications on basic income, identifies key trends, influential authors, and thematic areas of study. Using VOSviewer, CiteSpace, Biblioshiny, and other bibliometric tools allows the mapping of overviews of the most important keywords, co-authorship networks, and sources of publication on setting up the current discourse of UBI for the last several decades. By drawing these links, the present study pinpoints the primary lacuna in the existing literature, which is a need for more empirical studies of UBI implementation across different socio-economic contexts and its wider ramifications on social welfare, public health, and labor markets. The results of this study are expected to add to the debate on the potential that UBI offers as a policy lever toward combating contemporary socio-economic adversities.