Finland’s Basic Income Pilot
In 2017, Finland launched a program to give €560 ($616) a month to 2,000 unemployed citizens. The program, which lasted two years, was designed to replace traditional welfare systems in Finland that put employment-related conditions on cash dispersals. Part of the program’s design was to see whether an unconditional basic income could net better rates of employment in participants than those in a traditional welfare program.
While the program’s results showed that it had a positive emotional impact on participants, it did not markedly improve employment rates for them. As a result, some referred to the experiment as a “failure.” However, the experiment’s results also showed that a “no-strings-attached” basic income did not markedly dissuade recipients from job-seeking or employment behavior. Instead, it stayed roughly the same.
