Participation income (PI) is a method of delivering unemployment benefits by creating socially useful but non-commercial employment opportunities.
It differs from workfare in that it is a voluntary, albeit highly incentivized, occupational proposal which respects the human dignity of participants and could reduce clinical depression and the risk of suicide in situations of vulnerability.
[1] The original participation income model (PI) was proposed by Tony Atkinson a researcher at Nuffield College, Oxford around 1996 but would have been administratively cumbersome and possibly in contravention of human rights UDHR Article 4 (forced labour).
[6][7] The rationale for PI is connected with degrowth economics and post-productivism which seeks to recover time for activities which have sustainable (rather than productive) value, such as giving care and maintaining the environment, tasks which can never be fully valued in economic terms.
PI seeks to widen the range of activities, interests and social cohesion of individual adults of working age [8]