Universal basic income pilots
The following list provides an overview of the most famous universal basic income pilots, including projects which have not been launched yet but have been already approved by the respective political bodies or for the negotiations are in process.
As Alicia H. Munnell, who was examining the experiments in Indiana, Seattle and Denver explains,[1] a moderate reduction in work effort (17% among women, 7% among men) has been found by the American economist Gary Burtless.
However Jodie Allen remarked that work disincentive effects were large enough to suggest that as much as 50 to 60 percent of the transfers paid to two-parent families under NIT might go to replace lost earnings.
[7] Among all the people, only two key groups were found to be discouraged from working by the Mincome project – new mothers and teenaged boys, who, instead of entering the workforce at an early age, decided to study until grade 12, increasing the proportion of students who graduate high school.
[8] A longitudinal study of 1,420 low income children in rural North Carolina designed to observe their mental condition had the unintended result of also measuring the effect of an unconditional cash transfer on a subset of this group.
[9] The Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth has found that a quarter of the families belonging to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians have experienced a surge in annual income due to a newly built casino as during this study, a portion of profits of this casino were unconditionally distributed to all tribal members on a semi-annual basis.
[13] The purpose of the experiment was to tackle poverty, providing people with income security while, at the same time, not discouraging them from entering the labour force.
[8] The pilot project was cancelled on July 31, 2018 by the newly elected Progressive Conservative government under Ontario Premier Doug Ford, with his Minister of Children, Community and Social Services Lisa MacLeod stating simply it was 'unsustainable' without citing data.
Stockton, California is a city in the heart of the San Joaquin valley and the pilot program flourished from the support of the then-mayor, Micheal Tubbs.
[19][20] Whether or not the incentive to work diminished during these times, there was a positive psychological effect on individuals based on how they felt in having a guaranteed income each month.
[25] In 2013, due to extreme drought conditions, the Evangelical Lutheran church in Namibia provided a monthly cash grant of $100 to 6,000 individuals in four communities, modeled after the initial pilot program, from September 2013 to May 2014.
The experiment, which is being recorded in a documentary, aims to evaluate the effects of basic income in four areas: education participation of girls and women, access to healthcare, engagement in democratic institutions and local economic development.
[29] GiveDirectly, one of the highest ranking charities according to GiveWell,[30] is running the world’s largest and longest-term experiment to date studying the effects of a universal basic income.
[32] In total, 20,000 recipients from 195 rural villages are receiving a universal basic income for a period of two or twelve years, depending on the study group they belong to.
[31] Between April and June 2020, the researchers surveyed 8,427 participants of the study groups to track the impact of the UBI during the COVID pandemic situation.
[38] The initiative was organized in partnership with the UNICEF and SEWA and co-piloted by British researcher Guy Standing and Indian activist Renana Jhabvala with support of the economist Pranab Bardhan.
It is provided to all citizens and replaces subsidies for gasoline, electricity and some food items[42] that the government has applied for the elimination of inequality and poverty for years.
[dubious – discuss] It consists of a cash grant, which is given to families below a certain income level, provided they meet pre-arranged conditions such as overseeing their children's school attendance.
In total, 2,000 participants, who were randomly selected among those receiving unemployment benefits and aged 25–58, were entitled to an unconditional income of €560 per month, even if they found work during the two year period.
Addressing issues caused by automation, long-term unemployment and lower wages are part of a larger social context for the experiment.
Even though the granted sum is not as high as in case of Finland or other countries, it constitutes a huge relief for the families which are otherwise not protected at all due to the lack of unemployment benefits and minimum wage laws in Italy.
[71] However, the report also noted that there were "substantive and complex legislative and delivery barriers to piloting a CBI", given that Scottish Parliamentary powers were limited in their ability to make the needed changes to the social security system (which were determined at the UK Parliament in Westminster).
[71] The current constitutional and legal set up "would place significant restrictions on the pilot model design and potentially compromise learnings.
The IMV is defined as a "subjective right" and is intended to prevent poverty and social exclusion of people who live alone or integrated in a coexistence unit, when they are in a situation of vulnerability due to lack of sufficient financial resources to cover their basic needs.
The First Minister, Mark Drakeford said the pilot would "see whether the promises that basic income holds out are genuinely delivered" in people's lives.
