The city of Rochester announced that its Guaranteed Basic Income program, which gave families $500 a month for a year, was a success. Via WHEC:
The Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at Notre Dame found that people opened bank accounts, kept their cars on the road and got jobs.
Berkeley Brean: “You looked at the program. What was your number one takeaway?”
Professor Patrick Turner: “The GBI pilot was effective at providing cash to families and alleviating some of the immediate hardship they experience from having low incomes,” he said.
More than 11,000 people applied for the program in Rochester, with 351 selected through a lottery to get the $500 monthly payments.
Notre Dame researchers compared these participants to the 11,000 who did not get the money.
“One of the things people are commonly worried about with this kind of program is that when you give people cash they’re going to be less likely to go to work and be less productive members of society,” Turner said. “And we didn’t actually find any evidence of that in our study.”
It’s not enough, but bump it up to $1000 a month, and we’re talking about something that will make a long-term difference.
