What would a basic income cost in Barbados?
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Total cost per year
610 million Barbadian dollars
about 305 million US dollars
282,623 people × 180 Barbadian dollars a month × 12 months
Compared with
- GDP (nominal) (2025)3.8%
Barbados in numbers
Barbados has a population of 282,623 (2025) and a GDP of 16 billion Barbadian dollars (about 8.02 billion US dollars) in 2025.
Paying everyone 180 Barbadian dollars a month would cost 610 million Barbadian dollars a year (about 305 million US dollars), or 3.8% of GDP. The World Bank has no recent central government expense or tax figures for Barbados, so only GDP is compared.
Children only (under 18: 59,322) would cost 128 million Barbadian dollars a year (0.8% of GDP); adults only (18 and over: 223,301), 482 million Barbadian dollars (3%).
Default amount: 180 Barbadian dollars a month is the World Bank's international poverty line of $3.00 a day, converted into Barbadian dollars at the exchange rate implied by the World Bank's GDP in local currency and in US dollars (2025), because there is no recent PPP conversion factor, and rounded to two significant figures. It is a reference point, not a policy proposal; change it above.
How to read this
This is the gross cost: the total paid out. The real net cost depends on which taxes fund it, which benefits or tax breaks it replaces and whether the payment is taxed. The population, budget and GDP figures are not all from the same year (see the sources).
Sources for the figures
- Population
- World Bank: population, total (SP.POP.TOTL), and population by single year of age 0 to 17 (SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN), 2025
- SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN
- Default amount
- World Bank: international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), June 2025 update
- Retrieved from the World Bank API on November 9, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Government figures are central government, as a share of GDP in their own year, applied to the latest GDP.