The Biggest Payoff From Stockton’s Basic Income Program: Jobs
A new report on the California’s city’s no-strings-attached money experiment shows that the $500 monthly stipend did more than improve recipients’ well-being: It helped them find work.
Former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs in February 2020. The basic income program he championed is over, but a new study shows promising results.
Photographer: Nick Otto/AFP via Getty Images
In 2019, 125 people in Stockton, California, started receiving $500 a month, no strings attached. The privately funded program, known as the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), was designed not only to boost a handful of low-income residents in this struggling city of 300,000 in the Central Valley. It was a rigorous, randomized-control study, meant to evaluate whether, and how, doling out a localized basic income could work, and what happens to those who receive free money.
This week, a report on the first year of the two-year study was released. Some results document the experiment’s physical and emotional effects: People who received the cash reported less pain, anxiety and fatigue, and spent more time with their kids. But perhaps the most significant change associated with the program was its effect on their work status: Among recipients, the rate of full-time employment leaped 12 percentage points over the course of just one year.