Guaranteed minimum income (GMI), also called minimum income, is a social-welfare system that guarantees all citizens or families an income sufficient to live on, provided that certain eligibility conditions are met, typically: citizenship and that the person in question does not already receive a minimum level of income to live on.
Mincome, the "Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment", was a Canadian guaranteed annual income (GAI) social experiment conducted in Manitoba in the 1970s. The project was funded jointly by the Manitoba provincial government and the Canadian federal government under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. It was launched with a news release on February 22, 1974, under the New Democratic Party of Manitoba government of Edward Schreyer, and was closed down in 1979 under the Progressive Conservative of Manitoba government of Sterling Lyon and the federal Progressive Conservative Party of Joe Clark. The purpose of the experiment was to assess the social impact of a guaranteed, unconditional annual income, UBI, including whether a program of this nature would create disincentives to work for the recipients and, if so, to what extent.
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. The government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. CCTs seek to help the current generation in poverty, as well as breaking the cycle of poverty for the next through the development of human capital. Conditional cash transfers could help reduce feminization of poverty.
Education in Sierra Leone is legally required for all children for six years at primary level and three years in junior secondary education, but a shortage of schools and teachers has made implementation impossible. The Sierra Leone Civil War resulted in the destruction of 1,270 primary schools and in 2001 67 percent of all school-age children were out of school. The situation has improved considerably since then with primary school enrollment doubling between 2001 and 2005 and the reconstruction of many schools since the end of the war. However, there is still a long ways to go. In 2004, Junior secondary school enrollment was only 17% of primary school enrollment, and senior secondary school enrollment was only 8% of primary school education.
In the United States, poverty has both social and political implications. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty. Some of the many causes include income inequality, inflation, unemployment, debt traps and poor education. The majority of adults living in poverty are employed and have at least a high school education. Although the US is a relatively wealthy country by international standards, it has a persistently high poverty rate compared to other developed countries due in part to a less generous welfare system.
In economics, a negative income tax (NIT) is a system which reverses the direction in which tax is paid for incomes below a certain level; in other words, earners above that level pay money to the state while earners below it receive money, as shown by the blue arrows in the diagram. NIT was proposed by Juliet Rhys-Williams while working on the Beveridge Report in the early 1940s and popularized by Milton Friedman in the 1960s as a system in which the state makes payments to the poor when their income falls below a threshold, while taxing them on income above that threshold. Together with Friedman, supporters of NIT also included James Tobin, Joseph A. Pechman, and Peter M. Mieszkowski, and even then-President Richard Nixon, who suggested implementation of modified NIT in his Family Assistance Plan. After the increase in popularity of NIT, an experiment sponsored by the US government was conducted between 1968 and 1982 on effects of NIT on labour supply, income, and substitution effects.
The issue of the universal basic income gained prominence on the political agenda in Netherlands between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s but it has disappeared from the political agenda over the last fifteen years.
A cash transfer is a direct transfer payment of money to an eligible person. Cash transfers are either unconditional cash transfers or conditional cash transfers. They may be provided by organisations funded by private donors, or a local or regional government.
Rural poverty refers to situations where people living in non-urban regions are in a state or condition of lacking the financial resources and essentials for living. It takes account of factors of rural society, rural economy, and political systems that give rise to the marginalization and economic disadvantage found there. Rural areas, because of their small, spread-out populations, typically have less well maintained infrastructure and a harder time accessing markets, which tend to be concentrated in population centers.
Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to work. In contrast a guaranteed minimum income is paid only to those who do not already receive an income that is enough to live on. A UBI would be received independently of any other income. If the level is sufficient to meet a person's basic needs, it is sometimes called a full basic income; if it is less than that amount, it may be called a partial basic income. No country has yet introduced either, although there have been numerous pilot projects and the idea is discussed in many countries. Some have labelled UBI as utopian due to its historical origin.
GiveDirectly is a nonprofit organization operating in East Africa that helps families living in extreme poverty by making unconditional cash transfers to them via mobile phone. GiveDirectly transfers funds primarily to people in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda.
Universal basic income in India refers to the debate and practical experiments with universal basic income (UBI) in India. The greatest impetus has come from the 40-page chapter on UBI that the Economic Survey of India published in January 2017. It outlined the three themes of a proposed UBI programme:
Universal basic income in Canada refers to the debate and trials with basic income, negative income and related welfare systems in Canada. The debate goes back to the 1930s when the social credit movement had ideas around those lines. Two major basic income experiments have been conducted in Canada. Firstly the Mincome experiment in Manitoba 1974–1979, and secondly the Ontario Basic Income Pilot Project in 2017. The latter was intended to last for three years but only lasted a few months due to its subsequent cancellation by the then newly-elected Conservative government.
Universal basic income is a subject of much interest in the United Kingdom. There is a long history of discussion yet it has not been implemented to date. Interest in and support for universal basic income has increased substantially amongst the public and politicians in recent years.
Universal basic income (UBI) is discussed in many countries. This article summarizes the national and regional debates, where it takes place, and is a complement to the main article on the subject: universal basic income.
Universal basic income pilots are smaller-scale preliminary experiments which are carried out on selected members of the relevant population to assess the feasibility, costs and effects of the full-scale implementation of universal basic income, or the related concept of negative income tax, including partial universal basic income and similar programs. 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.
Quatinga Velho, or the Consortiun of Basic Income of Citizenship, is an independent basic income pilot conducted by the NPO ReCivitas who experienced payment of an unconditional basic income via direct democracy and funded by direct donations from people around the world. Basic income charity is run in the small community of Quatinga Velho in Brazil.
ReCivitas Institute is a Brazilian NPO as crowd-funded unconditional basic income pilot project in Quatinga Velho, Brazil. The project paid 30 reals a month to around a hundred members of the community for five years(2008 to 2014). In January 2016, ReCivitas launched a “Lifetime Basic Income” in the Brazilian village of Quatinga Velho, a project it hopes will serve as a model to other organizations. This new project Basic Income Startup which intends to make these payments permanent. As of January 16, 14 residents of Quatinga Velho have basic incomes, now set at an amount of 40 Reais, that they will retain for at least 20 years.
The Basic Income Alliance is a German single-issue political party that advocates for an unconditional basic income. It was founded in September 2016 in Munich. The Basic Income Alliance gained 97,539 votes at the German federal election 2017 and reached 0.2%.
Universal basic income and negative income tax, which is a related system, has been debated in the United States since the 1960s, and to a smaller extent also before that. During the 1960s and 1970s a number of experiments with negative income tax were conducted in United States and Canada. In the 1970s another and somewhat related welfare system was introduced instead, the Earned Income Tax Credit. The next big development in the history of basic income in the United States came in 1982, when the Alaska Permanent Fund was established. It has delivered some kind of basic income, financed from the state's oil and gas revenues, ever since.
