by Kate McFarland | Oct 19, 2017 | News
Existing and Upcoming BI-Related Experiments
By Kate McFarland
Last updated: October 15, 2017
It seems that 2017 has been a watershed year for the global basic income movement, as multiple governments and private research groups have independently conceived and launched experimental trials of basic income (and closely related policies). Several new experiments in North America and Europe represent the first such experiments in the developed world since the 1970s (when a negative income tax was tested in several cities in the United States and Canada), and the largest basic income trial ever designed is about to take place in Kenya.
At the same time, rumors of other experiments have appeared only to be revealed to have been premature, and sloppy and superficial media reports have obfuscated differences in the design and motivation of these disparate studies. This article reviews the latest information (as of October 2017) on the experiments that actually are being conducted (or well along the path) [1] [2].
The federal government of Finland is currently conducting an experiment of the effects of a basic income on unemployed citizens, which began in January 2017 and will conclude in December 2018. Prior to the launch of the Finnish experiment, the provincial government of Ontario had already announced its plans to test a type of unconditional income guarantee; at the time of this writing, it is currently enrolling participants in three areas of the province, who will receive an income guarantee for up to three years. In the Netherlands, another instigator of the recent interest in basic income experiments, municipal-level experiments have faced setbacks and changes in the quest to meet compliance with federal law; however, as of October, several cities have now launched experiments with the removal of conditions on social assistance benefits. The city of Barcelona has launched an experiment testing several potential reforms of its anti-poverty programs, including new social programs as well as unconditional cash payments. Proposals to test basic income at the municipal level have also lately gained considerable political support in Scotland.
In addition, two US-based non-profit organizations have completed pilot studies, and are preparing to launch privately funded basic income experiments on a large scale. After the Kenyan elections, the charity GiveDirectly plans to initiate a 12-year randomized controlled trial (RCT) testing the effects of universal basic income on villages in rural Kenya. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator Research has completed a feasibility study in Oakland, California, and is now finalizing the design of an RCT that is to involved 3,000 participants in two US states. (Edit: A privately funded trial in Stockton, California–announced around the same time this article was published–may soon join the list. However, the project is in its early planning stages, and few details have yet been determined.)
1. Finland’s “Perustulokokeilu” (Basic Income Experiment)
Status: Launched on January 1, 2017; in progress until December 2018.
Official website: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-income-experiment-2017-2018
In October 2015, the federal government of Finland formed a working group to research the design and implementation of a nationwide basic income experiment, described as a means to “find ways to reshape the social security system in response to changes in the labor market”.
One prevailing concern with existing systems of social security was the steep rate at which benefits are clawed back when beneficiaries receive a job, which has been hypothesized to discourage job-seeking. Additionally, those who gain employment on a short-term basis need to reapply for benefits after their position ends, often resulting in a gap in financial support. The latter has become a particular concern due to the increase in precarious work, such as temporary and contract positions (see, e.g., Marjukka Turunen’s presentation to Kela). Thus, the idea of unconditional basic income gained attention as a possible means to remove practical and psychological barriers that might currently deter unemployed Finns from looking for work.
After reviewing several design suggestions proposed by Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, the government settled on the program that was launched on January 1, 2017. The experimental group consists of 2,000 persons, who were randomly selected from Finns between the ages of 25 and 58 who had been receiving unemployment benefits from Kela in November 2016. (The remainder of the sample population, totaling around 175,000 individuals nationwide, constitutes the control group.)
These 2,000 participants are receiving unconditional monthly cash payments of €560 (about 590 USD), an amount insufficient to meet basic living expenses, but approximately equal to that provided by Finland’s existing programs of unemployment assistance.
In contrast to those who continue to receive Kela’s existing unemployment benefits, participants in the basic income pilot are not required to demonstrate that they are seeking employment, nor are they required to accept jobs offered to them, and those who do obtain work will continue to receive the full benefit.
The first payouts to experimental participants were distributed on January 9, 2016, and payments will continue through the end of the trial in December 2018. To avoid selection bias, participation was mandated for those chosen, and exit from the experiment is prohibited. However, the experiment has been designed to ensure that no participants will be placed in a worse financial position than they would have experienced under their previous benefits.
Labor supply effects are the main outcome of interest: the experiment will assess whether the final unemployment rates differ significantly between those individuals receiving the basic income and those receiving traditional employment benefits. Kela has also stated plans to examine difference in expenditure on medication, health care usage, and income variation.
To avoid observer effects, Kela aims to minimize interaction with experimental subjects during the duration of the trial, and will conduct no surveys or interviews of subjects until the experiment has concluded. Most analysis will be based on registry data that can be obtained without direct interaction with participants. No results of the experiment will be released prior to 2019, after the period of data collection has concluded. (Rumors of early results demonstrating a decrease in stress level were, in fact, based on a single anecdote voluntarily divulged to media.)
While many basic income supporters and “BI-curious” individuals have praised Finland’s initiative launching the first nationwide experiment of a basic income program, many activists have also expressed disappointment with the final design of the experiment, questioning its ability to produce useful results and even whether it should be called a “basic income” at all [3]. Particularly controversial have been the decisions to test only a “partial” basic income (i.e. an amount insufficient to meet basic living expenses), limit the target population to those who had previously been receiving unemployment benefits, and focus primarily on labor supply effects.
Research director Olli Kangas has recommended expansion of the experiment in future years in order to test different models of a basic income or broaden the target population. This, however, will depend on budgetary decisions of the federal government.
2. Ontario’s Basic Income (Guaranteed Minimum Income) Pilot
Status: Officially announced in April 2017; currently enrolling participants.
Official website: www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot
Before describing Ontario’s “Basic Income Pilot” (as the study is officially called) on BIEN’s website, a word about terminology is in order: in the Canadian context, the term ‘basic income’ is commonly used in a more expansive manner than the definition adopted by BIEN to refer to programs that guarantee minimum income, with no type of work requirement, for all members of society without any type of work conditions. This is more expansive that BIEN’s definition in that it omits the conditions that policy must provide payments to individuals (rather than households) and in an amount not dependent on additional earned income.
For example, Canadian writers and policymakers often use ‘basic income’ to refer to programs in which cash payments are not distributed universally, such as a negative income tax or top-up of low incomes. (In common Canadian terminology, the word ‘demogrant’ is used equivalently to BIEN’s use of ‘basic income’, and to refer to a sub-type of the programs that most Canadians call ‘basic income’.)
![](https://i0.wp.com/basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/7814739510_f187c8ceec_z.jpg?resize=420%2C236&ssl=1)
River in Lindsay, Ontario, CC BY 2.0 RichardBH
This clarification is important given that, in fact, Ontario’s experiment employs cash transfers that depend in their amount on both income and household status. Specifically, single participants will receive a guaranteed annual income of 16,989 CAD (€11,340), while couples will receive a minimum of 24,027 CAD (€16,038) per year (amounts pegged to 75% of the Low Income Measure or LIM, where the LIM is roughly 50% of area median income).
Moreover, the above amounts are the maximum payments; that is, they are the amounts that would be paid out to individuals and couples with no external income source. The amount of the benefit will be reduced by the amount of 50% of any earned income (e.g. if a single individual in the study receives 20,000 CAD per year in earned income, she will receive an additional 6,989 CAD per year through the pilot program, or 16,989 CAD less 10,000 CAD). This entails, for example, that single individuals will not receive any payment through program if their annual earned income rises above 48,054 CAD.
Additionally, only Ontarians with an annual income below a certain level (34,000 CAD for single individuals or 48,000 CAD for couples) are eligible to participate in the experiment. (In contrast to the experiments in Finland, the Netherlands, and Barcelona, the target population is not restricted to current welfare recipients; it is, however, restricted to the low-income population.)
Although the amount of the cash supplement depends on income and household status, it does not depend on employment status, participation in job-seeking activities, training, or any other prescribed activity, or proof of an inability to work (although individuals with disabilities can receive an additional amount of up to 500 CAD per month).
Compared to the Finnish government, the government of Ontario is less focused on employment effects in particular, and more interested in the ability of a guaranteed income program to reduce poverty, food insecurity, and mental and physical health problems caused or exacerbated by low or unstable income. This is one reason that, in the context of the Ontario experiment, it may be less significant that the cash benefit is clawed back with earned income; researchers and policymakers are less focused, if at all, on reducing or removing the “benefits cliff”. Meanwhile, poverty–the prevailing concern to Ontario–is not an issue motivating the trial in Finland.
![](https://i0.wp.com/basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/23846851278_781de32a4e_z.jpg?resize=420%2C280&ssl=1)
Thunder Bay lighthouse, CC BY-NC 2.0 C Hanchey
Since June 2017, the Ontario government has been enrolling participants from the three regions chosen as sites for the experiment: the Hamilton, Brantford, and Brant County region, Thunder Bay and surrounding area, and the city of Lindsay.
Residents of these regions have been randomly selected to receive application packages, and are eligible to enroll if they are between the ages of 18 and 64 with income below the levels mentioned above. Unlike the situation in Finland, participation is voluntary, and participants may opt out of the experiment at any time.
At the time of this writing, 400 participants have been enrolled from Hamilton and Thunder Bay areas. The government intends to enroll at total of 2,000 participants from these two regions, in addition to 2,000 from Lindsay (where enrollment will begin later in the year).
Participants will be regularly surveyed about topics such as their health, employment, and housing situation. Those assigned to the control group will receive no cash benefit but will be administered the same surveys. A third-party research group will evaluate outcomes in a variety of areas, including food security, stress and anxiety, mental health, health and healthcare usage, housing stability, education and training, and employment and labor market participation.
The experiment will continue for three years after its launch, with payments distributed on a monthly basis, and results are expected to be reported to the public in 2020.
3. Dutch Social Assistance Experiments
Status: Two-year experiments have been launched in four cities in October 2017, after meeting compliance with federal legislation; a fifth will follow in December (Nijmegen), and two cities (Amsterdam and Utrecht) are discussing revisions necessary for legal compliance.
In contrast to the cases in Finland and Ontario, in which the national and provincial governments (respectively) have called for and overseen the implementation of the trial programs, social assistance experiments in the Netherlands have developed “from the bottom up”: municipal leaders and university researchers in several Dutch cities planned experiments to test the replacement of the nation’s “workfare” benefits with unconditional cash assistance, and sought permission to carry out these experiments under the auspices of the Participation Act.
This national law, passed in 2015, tightened conditions on the receipt of welfare benefits, with the goal of promoting reintegration into the labor market. For example, individuals are commonly required to complete five job applications per week, attend group meetings, and participate in training activities in order to continue to receive their benefits. However, the law also granted municipalities the opportunity to implement new forms of social assistance on a trial basis for up to two years–subject to certain constraints (to be discussed below). Hence, the Participation Act might be said to have provided both the impetus to experiment with basic income (as an alternative to its workfare-based to benefits) as well as the license to do. As will be seen, however, the conditions of this legislation have also effectively precluded the ability of researchers to test a truly unconditional and non-means-tested basic income.
The Dutch municipal experiments, like the Finnish experiment, were motivated in large part by concern about the ability of existing welfare programs to incentivize work. However, while the Finnish experiment focuses on the role of monetary incentives (e.g. the ability to retain cash benefits after taking a job), the Dutch experiments have also stressed individuals’ intrinsic motivation to work. For example, drawing upon work in behavioral economics, Utrecht University economists Loek Groot and Timo Verlaat have argued that coercing individuals to work, as in the case of the nation’s “workfare” programs, can undermine their intrinsic motivation to perform fulfilling work and make productive contributions to society.
Thus, although the Dutch municipal experiments are designed to investigate the effect of removing financial disincentives to work (reducing the withdrawal rate on means-tested benefits), as described below, the most discussed experimental intervention has been the removal of coercive reintegration requirements on welfare recipients.
Researchers at the Universities of Groningen, Tilburg, and Utrecht initially proposed to test a policy close to a basic income. However, research teams experienced setbacks in 2016 and 2017, as interaction with the national Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment made clear that the terms of compliance with the Participation Act would prohibit experimentation with a truly unconditional benefit.
For example, if an experiment involves the removal of work reintegration requirements on benefits, the Ministry mandates that municipal officials survey test subjects after six and twelve months to verify that they have made adequate effort to find employment: if any participants are determined not to have made adequate job-seeking efforts during this time, they are subject to dismissal from the experiment. The Ministry has also required that any experiment including a treatment group with relaxed conditions on the receipt of benefits also must include a treatment group with stricter conditions (such as more intense reintegration activities). Finally, the Participation Act caps the amount of earned income that participants are permitted to retain on top of their social assistance benefits at €199 per month, meaning that a completely non-withdrawable (non-means-tested) benefit cannot be tested.
Despite such setbacks and constraints, however, several municipalities have designed–and are beginning to launch–experiments that meet the conditions of the Participation Act.
On July 3, 2017, the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment granted permission to four municipal-level social assistance experiments–in Groningen (with the neighboring village of Ten Boer), Wageningen, Tilburg, and Deventer. An application from Nijmegen was also approved shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, discussions are ongoing in Amsterdam, where the city has so far refused to adopt the stricter conditions required by the Participation Act, and Utrecht, where an application to experiment was approved conditionally on revising a city law to meet compliance with the act (to be decided in December).
In each of the two-year experiments, participants will be (or have been) randomly selected from a pool of current social assistance beneficiaries, and assigned either to a control group or to one of several treatment groups.
As in Ontario’s experiment, but in contrast to Finland’s, participation is voluntary for those selected.
The experiments in Tilburg and Wageningen include three treatment groups: (1) a group with the removal of reintegration requirements, such as job application quotas and participation in training programs, on welfare benefits; (2) a group with a more intensive form of reintegration service for welfare recipients (as per the requirements of the Participation Act); (3) a group permitted to keep additional income earned on top of welfare benefits (subjects in this group may retain 50% of additional earned income, up to the mandated maximum of €199 per month, for the duration of the two-year experiment; under current policy, welfare beneficiaries are permitted to keep only 25% of additional income, and only for up to six months).
The Groningen / Ten Boer experiment includes a fourth treatment group, in which participants are permitted to choose to join any one of the three preceding groups.
The Nijmegen experiment, in contrast, will combine features of above treatment groups into two group. In one group, reintegration requirements will be removed; in the other, more intensive reintegration requirements will be implemented, but subjects will be allowed more autonomy and discretion in selecting reintegration activities (e.g. volunteer work, help obtain full-time work, or assistance for entrepreneurship). In both, subjects will be able to retain of 50% of additional income (up to the €199 maximum).
Researchers plan to examine outcomes such as health, stress level, subjective well-being, financial well-being (such as amount of debt), education, employment (including part-time and temporary employment), and participation in social and cultural life.
The experiments in Tilburg, Wageningen, and Deventer began at the start of October 2017, with Groningen / Ten Boer to follow at the end of the month. Nijmegen plans to launch its experiment in December.
4. Barcelona’s B-MINCOME
Status: Launched in October 2017
Official website: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/bmincome/
Launched in October 2017, Barcelona’s B-MINCOME experiment is exploring several potential solutions to address poverty and social exclusion. The experiment is being conducted in Besòs area, the city’s poorest region, and, as in the above experiments, the target population consists of low-income individuals and households. As in the Finnish experiment and Dutch municipal experiments, participants are drawn from current recipients of social assistance benefits (in this case, Barcelona’s Municipal Social Services). Once again, although the program is thereby not a test of a truly “universal” benefit, this restriction is sensible in the context of the experiment, the main objective of which is to test the effectiveness of alternative anti-poverty programs.
A stratified random sample of 2,000 households was selected for the experiment, with 1,000 households assigned to the control group, and the other 1,000 assigned (at random) to one of ten treatment groups. (As in the Ontarian and Dutch experiments, but in contrast to the Finnish experiment, participation in the experiment was made voluntary for the selected households.)
All of the treatment groups will receive cash income supplements (called “Municipal Inclusion Support” or, in the Spanish acronym, “SMI”), but differ according to whether the SMI is accompanied by an additional social program and whether the SMI is means-tested. In general, the amount of the SMI will depend upon household composition and financial status, and is expected to range from €100 to €1,676 per month per household. A total of 550 households in the experiment will be assigned to participate in one of these four social programs, including an occupation and education program, a social and cooperative economy program, a guaranteed housing program, and a community participation program. The remaining 450 households will receive the SMI without any associated programs. Within this group, the receipt of the SMI is not conditional on work, willingness to work, or willingness to participate in any other type of program. Furthermore, for some of these 450 households, the SMI will not be means-tested.
Hence, although B-MINCOME is not only a test of basic income–it is also a test of the effectiveness of the additional social programs–it includes a trial of basic income. This is not coincidental: the project team contains several members of BIEN’s Spanish affiliate, Red Renta Básica, and consulted with representatives from Finland, Ontario, and Utrecht who have been involved with the design of the experiments in their respective regions (not to mention that its name refers to Manitoba’s well-known experiment with unconditional income guarantee, in the form of a negative income tax, in the 1970s).
To examine the impact of the cash transfers (SMI) and social program on poverty and social exclusion, researchers will examine a number of outcome variables, including labor market participation, food security, housing security, energy access, economic situation, education participation and attainment, community networks and participation, and health, happiness, and well-being. They will additionally investigate the question of whether the SMI reduces the administrative and bureaucratic responsibilities of social workers.
B-MINCOME is being administered by the Barcelona City Council, with consultation from five research organizations (the Young Foundation, the Institute of Governance and Public Policy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the Catalan Institution for Evaluation of Public Policies, and NOVACT-International Institute for Non-Violent Action), and was awarded financial support by Urban Innovative Actions, an initiative of the European Commission formed to support projects investigating “innovative and creative solutions” in urban areas.
The leading political party in the City Council, the left-wing Barcelona en Comú, has expressed interest in implementing a municipal cash transfer program if results of the experiment prove favorable.
5. GiveDirectly’s Basic Income Experiment in Kenya
Status: Full experiment (consisting of 300 rural villages) planned to launch after the Kenyan election on October 26, 2017; pilot study running in one village since October 2016. [Update: Official launch occurred in November 2017.]
Official website: www.givedirectly.org/basic-income.
GiveDirectly, a US-based charitable organization, has been providing unconditional cash transfers to poor residents of Kenya and Uganda since 2009, when it was founded by a team of economists who had become interested in the hypothesis that cash transfers are the most effective means to combat extreme poverty. Since this time, its practice of delivering cash grants directly to those in need has proven efficient and effective, earning the organization recognition as one of GiveWell’s top charities.
In 2016, GiveDirectly announced a new ambition: the first long-term and large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) of universal basic income. The experiment will provide unconditional cash transfers to the residents of 120 villages, comprising more than 16,000 people in total, with some receiving payments for up to 12 years. This makes the experiment the largest of its type, in terms of the number of individuals who will receive assistance, as well as the longest in duration [4]. The cost of the experiment will amount to $3o million, most of which has been now raised by private donors.
In contrast to all experiments taking place in developed nations, GiveDirectly’s experiment examines the impact of programs that are indeed universal–that is, in which the unconditional cash transfers are distributed to all individuals residing in the villages where the program will be implemented [5].
Indeed, the experiment is designed as an RCT in which villages (not individuals or households) are the experimental units: 300 villages in rural Kenya will be randomly assigned to either the control group (comprising 100 villages), in which no cash transfers are given to any residents, or one of three treatment groups, in which all residents receive some form of unconditional cash transfer. In the first treatment group (comprising 40 villages), residents will receive cash payments of about 23 USD (€21)–roughly half of the average income in rural Kenya–every month for 12 years. In the second treatment group (80 villages), residents will receive monthly cash payments of the same amount, but only for two years. In the third treatment group, residents will receive a single lump-sum payment equal in amount to the two-year basic income (that is, about 276 USD).
As GiveDirectly explains on its website, “Comparing the first and second groups of villages will shed light on how important the guarantee of future transfers is for outcomes today (e.g. taking a risk like starting a business). The comparison between the second and third groups will let us understand how breaking up a given amount of money affects its impact.”
The organization further indicates that it will investigate outcomes including the following: “economic status (income, assets, standard of living), time use (work, education, leisure, community involvement), risk-taking (migrating, starting businesses), gender relations (especially female empowerment), [and] aspirations and outlook on life.”
GiveDirectly had initially planned to launch the experiment in September 2017, but has postponed the launch to after the Kenyan elections on October 26.
An initial pilot study commenced in one village in October 2016, in which all 95 residents now receive monthly unconditional cash payments, which will continue in this village for 12 years. This preliminary study is intended to help experiments fine-tune the implementation of the full experiment, and is not itself to be included in the analysis of the full experiment. Because of this, GiveDirectly is making public much of its data that is collects from the pilot village (e.g. responses to a survey of participants). (It will not, however, publicize data as it is collected from villages that are part of the experiment.)
GiveDirectly expects to publish its first results one or two years after the experiment’s commencement.
6. Y Combinator’s plans for a United States experiment
Status: Completed feasibility study in Oakland; issued draft of research plan for randomized experiment (3,000 participants in total) in two US states.
Official website: https://basicincome.ycr.org/
In January 2016, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman (president of the start-up incubator Y Combinator) announced his intention to fund a test of basic income in the United States. Like many tech entrepreneurs, Altman cited concerns about job loss due to automation in explaining his interest in basic income: “I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.” The experiment is now the main project of the non-profit arm of Altman’s company, YC Research.
Since the initial announcement, YC Research has hired social work and political science PhD Elizabeth Rhodes as Research Director and assembled a team of expert advisors. This research team has designed and implemented a feasibility study in Oakland, California [6], and is now working to finalize the design of its full-scale experiment.
According to a project proposal released in September 2017, Y Combinator has decided to design the experiment as a randomized controlled trial, with a target population of low-income young adults–specifically, adults aged 21 to 40 whose incomes fall below the area median–in two US states. (Researchers will employ a stratified sample to ensure adequate representation across race, gender, and income categories.)
On the tentative design, researchers will select a total of 3,000 participants, of which 1,000 will be randomly assigned to the treatment group–whose members will receive unconditional cash payments of 1,000 USD per month–and the remaining 2,000 to the control group. (Individuals in the control group will provide the same type of feedback and data to researchers but receive only a much smaller cash payment, tentatively set at 50 USD per month, for their participation.) As currently planned, some individuals will receive the cash payments for three years, others for five.
Y Combinator emphasizes that its interest is a “holistic approach to understanding the individual-level effects of basic income”, in contrast to many past and present experiments which have focused on the labor market impacts of unconditional cash payments (such as Finland’s experiment and the negative income tax experiments conducted in the US in the 1970s). Among these individual-level effects, the research group is particularly interested in time use, mental and physical health, subjective well-being, financial health, decision making and attitudes toward risk, as well as political and social attitudes. Furthermore, although individual-level effects will be the focus of the experiment, researchers also hope to examine spillover effects on recipients’ families, friends, and communities.
While the research group has not finalized its choice of data sources and collection methods (see its project proposal for a discussion of possibilities currently under discussion), it plans to combine quantitative analysis with regular surveys and interviews. However, according to Rhodes, receipt of the cash payments will not be contingent on participation in surveys and interviews; payments will continue for the duration of the experiments even if recipients do not respond to requests for data and information.
To conduct the experiment, YC Research has partnered with the Center on Poverty and Inequality (CPI) at Stanford University. The research has been approved by Stanford’s Institutional Review Board for research involving human subjects. YC Research is also in the process of working with state and local governments to coordinate mechanisms for distributing payments without affecting recipients’ future eligibility for existing government benefits.
No specific launch date has been set for the experiment, as YC Research is still gathering feedback on its project proposal. However, at a plenary lecture at the 2017 BIEN Congress, Rhodes indicated that the research group hopes to commence the trial in early 2018.
7. Scotland’s plans for local experiments
Status: Government support pledged; preliminary reports in progress.
In November 2016, the Councils of Fife and Glasgow committed to investigate the feasibility of municipal-level basic income experiments. An important step forward occurred in February 2017, when the Glasgow City Council passed as a resolution to convene workshops on the financial, administrative, and constitutional feasibility of an experiment, partnering with the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), a British think tank responsible for a highly regarded report on potential for a basic income in the UK (“Creative Citizen, Creative State”).
Fife and Glasgow were later joined in their interest by North Ayrshire and Edinburgh.
In September 2017, the Scottish government announced its commitment to provide funding and support for basic income experiments in the four municipalities (see the RSA’s announcement), and RSA Scotland is now working with the government to prepare an initial report on the possibilities for an experiment in Glasgow.
No design decisions or prospective launch dates have yet been announced.
In general, the RSA and local authorities are attracted to basic income as a potential means to address poverty, precarious employment, economic insecurity, and the changing nature of work.
Notes
[1] The coverage of the present article is limited to projects that qualify as experiments in a social scientific sense. Thus, it does not include several projects that are sometimes listed–incorrectly–as “experiments” of basic income. Missing, for example, are lottery programs like Mein Grundeinkommen, as well as any pilot studies that lack a control group, such as the ReCitivas Institute’s pilot in Quatinga Velho and Eight’s two-year pilot study in Uganda (see “Some thoughts on basic income ‘experiments’” by Michael A Lewis).
Programs and policies such as Iran’s fuel subsidy reform and Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend are occasionally misconstrued in sentences like “Iran and Alaska have tested basic income”. These programs are also not experiments in the scientific sense, and thus omitted from inclusion in this article.
[2] Of course, no experiment can fully test the effects of a basic income, which, by definition, would guarantee cash stipends to all individuals in a community, and it would guarantee this support for life. Experiments, in contrast, are bound by their nature to be non-universal (since there must be a control group) and limited in duration. Furthermore, it is likely that additional changes to the taxation of benefit system, which are not captured in the experiments, would accompany the introduction of a basic income.
(In a forthcoming article, I will argue that, in the case of my own interest in basic income as a possible stimulus to long-term cultural change, the above facts preclude limited trials from having the capacity to produce usefully informative results.)
[3] According to many definitions, including those adopted by some of BIEN’s affiliates (although not BIEN itself), a “basic income” is a recurring payment sufficient to meet basic living expenses. On these definitions, it is indeed inaccurate to call describe the Finnish experiment a “basic income experiment” given €560 per month falls below average minimum monthly living expenses in Finland (although it might plausibly be called, as Kela sometimes more precisely describes it, a “partial basic income experiment”).
One may also raise concern regarding the universality of the program–or, rather, the lack thereof–given that a sample of adult recipients of unemployment benefits is clearly not representative of all Finns, and no “true” basic income (on any definition) would not be restricted only to the unemployed. One might alternatively say, however, that the Finnish experiment is indeed a test of a (partial) basic income, albeit one using a non-representative sample.
[4] In 2016, the Brazilian non-profit institute ReCivitas initiated a project, Basic Income Startup, which promises a “lifetime basic income” of 40 Reais (about 10 USD) per month to members of the village Quatinga Velho. The project targets volunteer recipients in areas where 40 Reais per month makes a significant impact on quality of life.
ReCivitas’s Basic Income Startup, however, is not an experiment (although occasionally miscategorized as one). Indeed, project founders have stated that they are already convinced that basic income is effective; their goal is not to test but to implement it.
[5] Previous trials of basic income and related policies have used saturation sites. Notably, Manitoba’s MINCOME experiments of the 1970s, which tested a type of minimum income guarantee in the form of a negative income tax, featured a saturation site in the town of the Dauphin.
The basic income experiment in Madhya Pradesh was also a saturation studym in which all members of the nine villages in the experimental group received monthly unconditional cash transfers (equal about one quarter of the median income in the state).
[6] Contrary to some misconceptions, the Oakland project was not itself an experiment. Its purpose was merely to test and fine-tune the mechanisms for conducting the experiment–such as the selection of participants, disbursement of funds, and collection of data–not to analyze the effects of unconditional cash transfers on recipients. The latter will be the goal of the project described in a newly released research proposal, and which has yet to be finalized and launched.
Addendum on Stockton, California (October 20, 2017)
Only a few days after this updated article was published, Michael Tubbs, Mayor of Stockton, California, announced his intention to carry out a pilot of basic income or guaranteed income in his city, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED).
The project will be privately funded, and has already received a $1 million SEED grant (if you will) from the Economic Security Project, a two-year initiative launched in December 2016 to fund basic income related projects in the United States.
At present, however, few details have been announced or decided.
According to its website, the project is “in the very early stages of development”.
Regarding the current state of the project, the site notes:
We will kick off the demonstration with a six-nine month design period that will prioritize community engagement and feedback. In that time period, we’ll identify research and storytelling partners […]. We will identify research priorities that complement existing research on unconditional cash transfers in the United States and invest in storytelling that honestly and authentically uplifts the experiences of recipients.
Thus, based on publicly available information, it is presently unclear when the project planned in Stockton will be launched, as well as what form it will take–including whether or not it will be an experiment (note the above emphasis on “storytelling” rather than comparison of data collected from control and treatment groups).
Basic Income News reporters will follow up with the conveners of the Stockton project, and provide more thorough, comprehensive and up-to-date information in a future stand-alone news article.
Reviewed by Heidi Karow
“Lab stuff” photo: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Rawbert|K|Photo
by Guest Contributor | Oct 16, 2017 | Opinion
In September 2016, Mexico City’s Chief of Government, Miguel Mancera, called for the development of a city constitution to grant formal recognition of the rights of all residents. An initial draft of the constitution included an article stating that each Mexico City resident is “entitled to a standard of living that is adequate for him or herself and their family, as well as to the continuous improvement of their living conditions,” a provision inspired by the basic income movement in Mexico (see the previous report in Basic Income News).
However, the proposal for an income guarantee was eventually dropped in the face of opposition from right and center parties. Instead, an article specifying the right to a “vital minimum” is the closest approach to a basic income to appear in the constitution ultimately ratified in February of this year.
In this Basic Income News special feature, Pablo Yanes of BIEN-Mexico describes the process by which a minimum income guarantee came to be replaced in the constitution by the idea of a “vital minimum”, and discusses how this might nonetheless be perceived as a victory for basic income supporters.
THE STRAIGHT LINE AND THE CURVED LINE:
BASIC INCOME, VITAL MINIMUM AND THE CONSTITUTION OF MEXICO CITY [1]
Pablo Yanes, BIEN-Mexico [2]
In Mexico, the discourse around basic income achieved never before seen dimensions and intensity this year due to the debates held by the Constitutional Assembly that deliberated and approved Mexico City’s Constitution.
As we will see later on, in the original proposal, the Chief of Government proposed the recognition of basic income as a right for all persons, from birth.
Finally however, after many negotiations, the universal right to a vital minimum was agreed upon as a compromise with regards to recognizing basic income. This was not the original proposal, but the phrasing contains the original intent and is close to its philosophical content. There is no doubt that this is a great step ahead in the never-straight path of politics.
Because of this, it is important to highlight that the basic income debate in Mexico now has a new status: it’s a political discussion with legislative implications. It’s a part of the discourse around different alternatives for the country’s development, which will only grow with the coming election cycle that will culminate in July of next year. In Mexico, within a very short timespan, basic income went from an idea confined to small academic and political circles, to one of the most important debates held in the Constitutional Assembly of one of the most relevant cities on the American continent.
A non-minimalist vital minimum
Thoughts on basic income, citizen income or a right to a vital minimum have been present at the heart of the Supreme Court of the Nation, which, in 2007, published a judicial thesis whose reading could help illuminate much of the ongoing debate. Due to its relevance I quote it extensively:
“The Constitutional right to a vital minimum is fully in force from the systemic interpretation of the fundamental rights enshrined in the General Constitution […]. A principle of underpinning for a Democratic State of Law is one that requires individuals to have, as a starting point, conditions such that they are allowed to lead a fully autonomous life plan, such that those who are governed can fully participate in democratic life. In this way, the enjoyment of a vital minimum is a principle of underpinning without which the central coordinates of our Constitutional order lack meaning, insofar as the intersection between the Powers of State and the trappings of rights and fundamental freedoms consist of the determination for dignified and autonomous subsistence, protected by the Constitution. This parameter constitutes the content of the right to a vital minimum, which coincides with the competencies, basic conditions and social benefits needed so that a person can lead a life free from the fears and burdens of misery, such that the aim of the right to a vital minimum encompasses all of the positive or negative measures that are indispensable in order to stop a person from being unconstitutionally reduced in his or her intrinsic value as a human being, because of a lack of material conditions needed for dignified existence. Thus this right seeks to guarantee that the person – the center of judicial ordering – does not become an instrument for other ends, objectives, purposes, goods or interests, no matter how important or valuable these are”. [3]
Even if a vital minimum and basic income are not the same thing, it can be deduced that a guaranteed basic income is a fundamental tool for enjoying a vital minimum alongside universal access to other rights and decommodified services such as health care, education and diverse social protection mechanisms. Basic income fits perfectly into a definition of a vital minimum that calls for a guaranteed basic income and access to different public services and goods to achieve maximum possible well-being.
Daring, voting and negotiating
Because of this, the inclusion of basic income as a right in the Mexico City Constitution Project is hugely important, as it attunes the proposal to the fundamental contents of the Human Rights reform in Mexico in 2011 and with the emerging international debates in anticipation of the challenges of the 21st century.
In it’s original proposal, the draft of the Constitution of Mexico City read as follows:
“Every person has a right to a standard of living that is adequate for them and their family, as well as a continued improvement of existence conditions. The right to a basic income is guaranteed, with priority for people in situations of poverty and those that cannot fulfill their material needs by their own means, as well as priority attention groups. In order to access basic income, this will defer to the common dispositions in this article.”
This wording generated intense debate, one of the most intense ones in the Constitutional Assembly, due to the opposition of certain political forces to the recognition of the right to basic income derived from the condition of being a person or from citizenship. The arguments for financial unsustainability and for the undesirability of the program due to possible political manipulation (thinking of it as a program and not a right) as well as the possible counter-incentives to work and personal effort were repeated. Nothing new.
It’s noteworthy that, in the original wording, this article not only recognized basic income as a right for all people, as well as including the principle of an adequate standard of living and the constant improvement of living conditions, but also included an operational element that watered down the strength of the recognition of the right by mentioning priorities (non-exclusivity) in its implementation regarding impoverished people and those lacking their own means.
These limitations notwithstanding, the recognition of basic income as a right was submitted to a vote by the Assembly and obtained 57% of the vote, a clear majority, but not the 66% majority required by the Assembly rules. This led to a round of negotiations just as or even more intense than the original debates.
Several alternatives were proposed by the different committees in the search for new wording. Fox example: “Art. 14: Every person has a right to a basic income.” and “Art. 22: Basic income will serve as a mechanism that will, progressively, guarantee access to a minimum basis of well-being, beginning with people in situations of poverty and vulnerability.”
This was not accepted because it mentioned income. Another proposal was made.
“3. Every person shall have the right to a minimum subsistence income that will cover the various dimensions of socio-economic well-being and contribute to a free and dignified existence. The authorities will progressively ensure its fulfillment.”
However, this was not accepted because it mentioned a minimum income for every person (universal).
A variant of this last proposal was created after some more negotiations:
“Every person, from birth, will enjoy the right to a subsistence minimum that covers the various dimensions of well-being and covers their basic human need. The authorities will progressively guarantee its fulfillment.”
This also was not accepted because of the mention of the various dimensions of well-being, in particular as a right for every person since birth.
Finally, after several long days and before the risk of not reaching a two thirds majority, the following wording was agreed upon:
“Article 9. Dignified Life
- Every person is entitled to a vital minimum to ensure a dignified life by the terms of this Constitution.
(Article 17) The mechanisms to make the right to a vital minimum, giving priority to people in a situation of poverty, which will be established according to the criteria of progressiveness, with the indicators determined by the appropriate federal Constitutional organism and the measurable goals established by the corresponding local organism.”
The debate on basic income in Mexico City’s Constitution coincides with both the Senate of the Republic and Congress having proposals for a Constitutional reform recognizing basic income as a right on a national level, introduced by Senator Luis Sánchez and Congresswomen Araceli Damián and Xóchitl Hernández.
That another state in the Republic, Jalisco, also introduced the concept of vital minimum as a guiding axis of its planning is also relevant, even if its relationship to basic income as a right is less clear than in the case of Mexico City. In any case, it is relevant and even older than the Mexico City case.
The Constitution for the State of Jalisco reads:
“Article 4. The human rights recognized for the people within the territory of the State of Jalisco are those in the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States as well as those enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emitted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, in the American Convention on Human Rights, […] and in the treaties, conventions and international accord that the Federal Government has signed or that is otherwise a part of, attendant to the principle of a vital minimum as an axis for democratic planning via which the State must create the conditions so that every person can fulfill his or her life plan.”
Two steps forward, but one step back?
The discussion around basic income in the Mexico City Constitution was resolved, likely provisionally, by recognizing the right to a vital minimum.
This contains several positives which cannot be underestimated:
- The vital minimum was recognized as a right and basic income was left as an underlying part of this.
- This recognition was based on the Supreme Court’s definition, which is not a minimalist one. On the contrary, it’s a bet on satisfying the material conditions that make a person’s independence and autonomy possible.
- It was established as a universal right (all people). Even if priorities are mentioned, it was never proposed as a mechanism only for poor people, or that it would be means-tested.
- It was framed within the guarantee of a dignified life and not a program for combating poverty, even if it is a powerful tool for the eradication of income poverty.
These are all highly meaningful advancements beyond a doubt. On the other hand, some limitations or risks remain, such as:
- The original proposal mentioned basic income as a right; this was not included in the final wording.
- Basic Income can be argued for within the vital minimum, but it can also become diluted within it.
- Normative definitions were mixed with operational criteria, which leads to lingering ambiguity regarding the vital minimum as a universal emancipation tool or as a measure for groups in a situation of poverty or social disadvantage.
- Potential legal competency or conceptualization conflicts are introduced by mentioning the utilization of criteria from the appropriate federal organism (CONEVAL) and the local organism (The Planning Institute and Autonomous Evaluation Council for the City) for determining measurable goals and indicators.
I would like to stress that it is feasible for this to be a preliminary wording, as the City’s Congress will begin working next year and will not be bound by the compositional rules or the interplay of forces present in the Constitutional Assembly. Consequently, new debates and modifications that are closer to the original project cannot be ruled out.
A balance of the content of the articles addressing the vital minimum in the Mexico City Constitution published on February 5th 2017 allows us to state that there is significant progress that will have to be landed later in the definition of the secondary legislation and the formulation of policies, without ruling out new debates and reforms for the Constitutional text itself.
Additionally, it must be remembered that Mexico City has been an entity that is advanced in the recognition of new rights (with strong repercussions at a national level) and that these rights have also gone through intermediate stages.
Here are some examples:
Today, the legal termination of a pregnancy is a reality in Mexico City. However, in order to reach this state, an intermediate step had to be taken in 2000 with a partial reform of the penal code, which was limited to increasing valid reasons for terminating a pregnancy.
Today, the right to equal same sex marriage is fully recognized in Mexico City, including the capacity to adopt, but the intermediate step of civil partnerships (Sociedades de Convivencia) first had to be established in a legal reform in 2006.
And today, the Mexico City Constitution recognizes a vital minimum as a right for all people. It’s convenient to ask ourselves if the recognition of this right is an intermediate step towards the fully recognition of basic income as a universal right in Mexico City.
Even beyond this, the inclusion of basic income as a right proposal in the Constitutional project for Mexico City and the recognition of the right to a vital minimum constitute a relevant step ahead in the discussions regarding social policy, human rights and the social state in the 21st century.
It is a debate that has reached the legislative sphere and is here to stay, both in Mexico and many other parts of the world. What could have seemed a wild idea a few years ago is now treated respectfully and considered a rational, reasoned proposal that has to be debated and talked about.
This is a welcome debate and one that we must congratulate ourselves on. It’s a debate that is just beginning and that will intensify in the foreseeable future with the same speed with which changes and challenges replace each other in this vertiginous time of doubt and hope.
[1] This article is based on a presentation written for the 17 BIEN Congress.
[2] Research Coordinator for the subregional ECLAC headquarters in Mexico. The opinions expressed within may not be those of the United Nations System.
[3] SCJN. Tipo de Tesis: Aislada. Fuente: Semanario Judicial de la Federación y su Gaceta. Tomo XXV, Mayo de 2007. Tesis: 1a. XCVII/2007.Página: 793
Kate McFarland also contributed to this report.
Heidi Karow, copy-editor.
by Guest Contributor | Oct 12, 2017 | Opinion
Why it’s useful to see Basic Income through the lens of Population Health Intervention Research
Thanks in part to the health sciences, there is widespread public acceptance that being poor is bad for your health. It doesn’t take much for us to make the connections. We might expect that less to eat and poor housing conditions interfere with our ability to maintain healthy bodies and immune systems. Less money could mean no access to things like computers so that people can visit sites like Thenutritioninsider.com
to get advice on how to eat healthy and look after their bodies. It may also mean less access to the health services that could treat or prevent illness and disease.
We need to make treatments more accessible which is why using coupons from somewhere like Save On Cannabis for CBD products might enable the vast health inequality to become smaller in the future. Moreover, fewer resources might mean fewer opportunities and fewer job options. Poverty also compounds political and social injustice, with marginalized people such as women, Indigenous people and racialized groups profoundly affected by poverty. These groups often constitute much of the poor. Lastly, evidence suggest we suffer the psychological consequences of living in material deprivation, both in absolute terms and relative to others. Therefore it is a necessity for marketing cbd brands to change the narrative around cbd products so that there’s a change in the structure and more people get accessible medical care.
The immense research on poverty, income inequality, and the social determinants of health culminated in public sympathy for the plight of the poor. Yet for all the studies that have been done on poverty, perhaps it is time to develop research and public support for a solution – such as Basic Income. There are practical challenges to getting basic income into common public health parlance. The health of everyone is highly important, no matter the level of wealth, every person should have access to healthcare, for example, men may need sexual health medications (), which means that they must be able to have that access when required by their doctor.
The answer may lie in the understanding of Basic Income as an ideological proposal that can affect our health. The discourse around basic income as a deeply ethical idea is necessary, but perhaps insufficient. I believe we should consider reframing the concept concretely as a population health intervention.
Why call basic income a “population health intervention”?
A concept advanced by Canadian researchers Potvin and Hawe (2012) as being policies or programs that shift the distribution of health risk by addressing the underlying social, economic and environmental conditions, population health intervention research is a unique approach to figuring out how we are affected by policies that have a wholesale effect on people. Eminent basic income economist Dr. Evelyn Forget took this approach in her paper “New questions, new data, old interventions: The health effects of a guaranteed annual income” (Forget 2013). She used old administrative data from the well-known “Mincome” experiment in Manitoba, and looked at health records from the same time-period. She saw a reduction in hospital burden relative to a similar town’s health care use that did not get the income grant.
Calling basic income an intervention means that we can treat it as a ‘natural experiment‘.
We can study the impact of a policy on our health and well-being without necessarily running a Randomized Controlled Trial (where you randomly assign some people to a treatment, policy, or program, and not others).
Many have proposed that we need to conduct this sort of formal scientific experiment first. Some have questioned how useful such limited studies would be. A Randomized Controlled Trial might tell us whether basic income works in a certain social, economic, and political setting, but tells us little about whether the policy would work in other settings, or why the policy had a particular effect.
We ought to be careful not to set ourselves up to fail with studies too narrowly drawn in scope. Mixed or unexpected results from such studies also risks misinterpretation, and can be used to prevent basic income from entering policy.
Although the Ontario Pilot Program represents a step in the right direction, nothing stops us from advocating for the full national implementation of basic income. A host of different research and study designs would be embedded into the impact evaluation of this federal policy, on par with health care or public education. Framing a given policy as a population health intervention acknowledges the fact that many there are health-promoting aspects to programs outside of health care sector (Hawe and Potvin 2009).
Basic income is such a policy. Programs to alleviate poverty lie outside the doctor’s office, but nevertheless have a profound impact on health.
Population Health Intervention Research compels us to think bigger than ourselves.
Traditional medicine treats the individual person. If we are looking at the effect of social programs and policies, this unit of analysis is often too small to see measurable differences in any single person. Moreover, if we restrict a given treatment or social program to the poorest people – such as welfare, we may see limited overall benefits to the population as a whole.
Epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose recognized this problem (Rose 1985). Imagine that people lie on a continuum of ‘risk’ for certain diseases and health outcomes. For example, this could be said of high blood pressure as a risk factor for heart attack. Higher blood pressure puts you at higher risk of heart attack.
For our purposes, let’s say this distribution represents the relationship between poverty and getting sick. Higher poverty puts you at higher risk of ‘sickness’. We might expect that most people lie somewhere in the middle of the distribution, while those at very high or very low poverty sit somewhere at the tails.
![](https://basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Rose-health.tif)
![](https://i0.wp.com/basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/rose-health.png?resize=821%2C363&ssl=1)
Rose noted that traditional medicine’s approach was to target high risk people at the far right. However, these people are a smaller proportion, and paying attention only to them might not give us the biggest bang for our buck. Instead, he posited that interventions that reach entire groups of people would ‘shift’ the distribution itself. At the end of the day, he estimated that these far-reaching treatments would have a bigger impact overall (Rose 1985).
Basic income fits that profile – a social policy that brings everyone up, effectively ‘shifting’ the distribution. In order to examine policies that lend a helping hand to everyone, we need a scientific lens that is broad enough to capture the whole picture. Reframing basic income as a population shifter might fill that void.
Lastly, population health interventions allow us to redirect our thinking from the problem to the solution.
We keep studying poverty, not the fixes for poverty. A population health intervention approach calls for the health sciences to consider the potential gains to be made by studying the impact of income interventions on population health. We should be turning our attention from studying how poverty effects our health, to studying how fixing poverty effects our health.
You might be quick to point out that we have not eradicated poverty yet. So, how do we study this state of affairs, when it doesn’t yet exist?
In some ways, we can. We have the pilot run in Dauphin, Manitoba that in many ways, was ahead of its time. Dr. Forget was the first to recognize the strength of “intervention-alizing” the Canadian basic income experiment. We can also examine policies that get close to basic income, such as the Bolsa Família program of Brazil – a conditional cash transfer available to families with children. In Canada, the non-conditional income grant for senior citizens called the Old Age Supplement has been analyzed as an analog to basic income (McIntyre, Kwok et al. 2016) and indeed, those researchers found that participants eligible for OAS reported better self-reported physical, mental, and function health. Importantly, they also found those on OAS (which is non-conditional) where better off than those on conditional income programs. These are innovative approaches to the question of basic income’s potential impact, using information we already have. And, it might move us from studies of poverty, toward studies of basic income.
As it stands, promoting basic income as a population health intervention for the sake of our health is underutilized, yet it seems like a sensible way to communicate the idea. Poverty is intricately tied to the material conditions of our lives and societal position in the world, predicated on sex, race, and class. How a policy like basic income works among these conditions deserves no less than comprehensive and holistic look at how our health is profoundly impacted. Research that is based on an understanding of population health intervention attempts to do just this – and capture the value and differential effect of these interventions, the processes by which they bring about change and the contexts within which they work best (Hawe and Potvin 2009).
The Dauphin Experiment and the impending Ontario Pilot have and will continue to shape our thinking moving forward. They are also a testament to the desire of Canadians for a better, kinder, healthier society for all. However, we have not yet fully transformed the public’s conception of poverty alleviation as a necessary policy, worthy of widespread implementation as are universal health care, public education, or social assistance.
Implementing a basic income as an essential social program and for our health is possible, and fully within our experience of policy-making at both the provincial and national levels. The time has come to make this a reality.
Sarah M Mah is a PhD student in the department of Geography at McGill University. She is also a member of the Asian Women for Equality Society, an organization dedicated to the campaign for a Guaranteed Livable Income.
The opinions expressed above are not necessarily those of BIEN or BI News.
References
Forget, E. L. (2013). “New questions, new data, old interventions: the health effects of a guaranteed annual income.” Prev Med 57(6): 925-928.
Hawe, P. and L. Potvin (2009). “What is population health intervention research?” Can J Public Health 100(1): Suppl I8-14.
McIntyre, L., C. Kwok, J. C. Emery and D. J. Dutton (2016). “Impact of a guaranteed annual income program on Canadian seniors’ physical, mental and functional health.” Can J Public Health 107(2): e176-182.
Rose, G. (1985). “Sick individuals and sick populations.” Int J Epidemiol 14(1): 32-38.