Guaranteed Income Resources
State strategies to strengthen economic opportunity | Minnesota Department of Human Services and BUILD Initiative
This brief provides insight into designing guaranteed income programs to ensure they are implemented effectively and efficiently with employment and other social support services to provide families with economic security and social mobility. In the first of two sections, the challenge and policy options are discussed. In the second, a table describes key income supports and strategies for states and local leaders to ensure guaranteed income can be complementary and additive to have the greatest impact on families’ financial well-being.
Guaranteed Income Webinar Series | Minnesota Department of Human Services and BUILD Initiative
In this four-part webinar series, participants will learn about cash transfer examples from across the country and Minnesota.
Bulletin 23-04-01: Unearned Income Policy for Public Assistance Programs | Minnesota Department of Human Services
Guidance on how to treat unearned income sources when determining eligibility or benefits for the Minnesota Family Investment Program, Diversionary Work Program, refugee cash assistance, general assistance, Minnesota Supplemental Aid, housing support, Child Care Assistance Program and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
A Systematic Review of Innovative Cash Transfer Programs in the United States | Future Services Institute Report
This report reviews and compares several significant cash transfer programs in the United States. All programs under review have been piloted or scaled, helping to provide insights into the implementation and impact of these programs.
How guaranteed income payments affect public benefits | Minnesota Department of Human Services
This is a basic overview of how guaranteed income could affect benefits families may receive or want to apply for. Policy Bulletin, 23-04-01 Unearned Income Policy for Public Assistance Programs, has guidance for Department of Human Services public assistance programs.
Guaranteed Income Pilot Dashboard | GuaranteedIncome.us
The Guaranteed Income Pilots Dashboard is designed to visualize data from more than 30 guaranteed income pilots across the United States. This data and testimonies from participants shed light on how unconditional cash provides people the opportunity, freedom and resilience to build financial security. The dashboard launched in September 2022 with aggregate spending data, which will be updated quarterly.
What we know about universal basic income: A cross-synthesis of reviews | Stanford Basic Income Lab Report
This report compiles and critically examines 16 reviews of the evidence to synthesize key findings, identify evidence gaps, and derive directions for future universal basic income research, policy and practice.
No Strings Attached: The Behavioral Effects of U.S. Unconditional Cash Transfer Programs | Roosevelt Institute
In this evidence review, the Roosevelt Institute explores how unconditional cash transfers affected recipients’ behavior in three major natural experiments. While the amounts dispersed and time periods were distinct in each experiment, each provided money without set conditions or a means test. The institute synthesized data for the following outcomes: consumption; labor force participation (employment, hours worked and earnings); education; health; and other social outcomes, such as marriage or fertility choices. Each program shares different components of a universal basic income, a cash transfer everyone within a geographic or political territory regularly receives with no long-term conditions. By understanding the effects of these programs, the institute can generate answers to how an unconditional cash transfer program might affect recipients in the future.
Income guarantee benefits and financing: poverty and distributional impacts | Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University
In this brief, the Center on Poverty and Social Policy explores three alternative income guarantee designs and three primary financing methods for the program benefits. A common argument against a universal basic income is that the cost is too high, and the benefits should be targeted. Using more general models of an income guarantee, the center explores the feasibility of applying a fundamental baseline tax reform, eliminating potentially redundant tax code provisions (personal deductions and child or dependent tax credits) while financing the remainder of program costs by either a proportional increase in federal income taxes, a consumption tax via a value-added tax, or a carbon tax. One major finding is that income guarantee policies could significantly decrease poverty.
Protecting benefits in guaranteed income pilots: lessons learned from the abundant birth project | San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment
This brief offers lessons learned about how to protect recipient benefits, particularly in California, through the lens of the Abundant Birth Project, a pilot program aimed at reducing birth health disparities and improving birth outcomes for Black and Pacific Islander pregnant women in San Francisco by providing $1,000 per month for six months during pregnancy and six months post-partum.
This brief focuses on strategies to attain waivers that will exempt guaranteed income cash transfers from income eligibility determinations in various public benefits.
Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED): The country's first guaranteed income pilot
Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration was born out of the simple belief that the best investments are made in people. In February 2019, Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration began giving 125 Stocktonians a guaranteed income of $500 each month for 24 months. This income is unconditional, meaning there are no strings attached and no work requirements. With a hand-up rather than a handout, Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration seeks to empower its recipients financially and to prove to supporters and skeptics alike that poverty results from a lack of cash, not character.
Healthy communities and universal basic income: A conceptual framework and evidence review | Stanford Basic Income Lab Report
The Stanford Basic Income Lab aims to promote an informed public conversation on universal basic income and its potential to alleviate poverty, precariousness and inequality.
Accelerating equity and justice: Basic income and generational wealth | Institute of Assets and Social Policy
This policy brief critically examines the evidence and theories pertinent to cash transfers and wealth-generating programs, highlighting bold promises, evidentiary foundation and challenges. The following section builds upon knowledge of cash transfers and wealth accumulation to design a realistic Just Futures Fund policy proposal. The estimated impacts are modeled for this bold policy design with racial justice and equity as our North Stars.
State-level data for understanding child poverty | Child Trends
Child poverty fell an unprecedented 59% over the past quarter century in the United States. This child poverty data tool can be used to explore how poverty declined among children in each state from 1980 to today, alongside changes in economic and demographic conditions.
Mayors vow to launch guaranteed income programs across US | AP News
Mayors in at least 25 cities — from Los Angeles to Paterson, New Jersey — have pledged to support such programs as part of the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income group. They are led by Michael Tubbs, the 30-year-old mayor of Stockton, California, who launched one of the country’s first guaranteed income programs last year with the help of private donations from Silicon Valley.
People’s Prosperity podcast | Bright Futures
The Bright Futures Audio Postcards project is a visual and audio representation of Saint Paul’s People’s Prosperity Guaranteed Income Pilot Program. The Bright Futures physical postcards have a QR code with a link to a produced audio story of one of the current participants in the People’s Prosperity Pilot, describing why the program worked for their family.
For more than 20 guaranteed income projects, the data is in | Bloomberg News
The programs have been a lifeline across the U.S., new research shows — especially for parents of color. This data provides a look at the reach and impact of city pilot programs designed to test the power of no-strings-attached cash.
Study: St. Paul's guaranteed income program improved families' well-being | StarTribune
The University of Pennsylvania study found the extra money to low-income St. Paul families improved positive outlooks as well as cash flow.
“Freedom to Think What Could Be Best for Our Family”: A Guaranteed Income Experiment in CollegeBound St. Paul/A Children’s Savings Account Program | Sociology Mind
The goal of this study is to understand policy implications of focusing on meeting basic needs today versus security and growth needs for tomorrow in the lives of the poor. Semi-structured interviews with 32 Boost participants reveal that families characterize their financial situation as just “making it” through use of budgeting, welfare, family help, extra work, and borrowing. Congruent with a financial needs’ theory of saving, we find that across study groups participants, in part, spend and save according to a hierarchy of needs (first spending on survival such as food and bills, followed by saving for security, and lastly, saving for growth needs such as education and retirement), with findings supported by actual spending data. Further, this study design allows us to see that, consistent with financial needs theory (and contrary to conventional attitudes about irresponsible spending), after survival needs are met, participants receiving guaranteed income use a portion of the $500 payment to save for their security and growth needs.
St. Paul’s guaranteed income pilot a ‘life raft’ for families | Star Tribune
In November 2020, Mayor Melvin Carter launched the St. Paul pilot, giving 150 families $500 a month for 18 months. Since then, dozens of cities have rolled out similar programs to make the case for a federal guaranteed income policy.
Twin Cities at forefront of guaranteed basic income experiment | MPR News
Minneapolis and St. Paul are at the forefront of a national experiment in what happens when people are given a few hundred extra dollars a month.
U.S. cities try new way to help the poor: give them money | Reuters
Spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, dozens of U.S. cities are deploying a new tool in their war on poverty: cash. At least 16 cities and counties are handing out no-strings-attached payments to some low-income residents, a Reuters tally found. At least 31 other local governments plan to do so in the months ahead.