(OSV News) — Guaranteed basic income, also known as universal basic income, is one of the more contested threads in America’s social safety net — the network of state and federal government programs designed to insulate citizens from economic hardship.
A regular monthly or annual cash payment from the government — with no conditions attached to work, income amount or marriage status — the concept has both supporters and detractors. Supporters say it could lift people from poverty and instability, while critics warn it could stifle both motivation and employment.
Universal basic income program tested in New York
The city of Rochester, New York, — in research partnership with the Lab for Economic Opportunities, or LEO, at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana — announced in December its year-long Guaranteed Basic Income program was a success. More than 11,000 people applied for the city’s GBI pilot, which ultimately selected 351 recipients through a lottery.
Notre Dame compared the recipients’ outcomes with the 11,000 other applicants and found the program’s $500 monthly payment to participants was effective.
“In those 12 months when they were receiving cash from the program, people were less likely to be food insecure,” Patrick Turner, an assistant professor of economics at Notre Dame, and a LEO researcher, told OSV News.
“They were less likely to worry about being evicted from their homes, or to experience utilities disconnection. After the program ended, the people who received the cash reported they feel less likely to experience those kind of material hardships in the future, even once the cash went away,” he said.
“The opportunity of having $500 extra a month to make ends meet,” he added, “gave them a little bit of breathing room during that year they were receiving the program.”
Participants were also able to build savings, find employment, and get to their jobs.
“They have about $150 or so more in savings a year after receiving these cash payments,” Turner noted. “They were slightly more likely to be working. They have better, more reliable transportation.”
The most recent U.S. Census data indicates 29.3% of Rochester residents live in poverty. Nationally, the 2024 figure was 10.6% — or 35.9 million Americans.
The federal poverty line for a family of four in the U.S. is $32,150 in 2025. Pew Research data released in 2025 also found more than one in six (18%) of Catholic households make under $30,000.
Tests of similar programs underway, data collected
While some outcomes of the Rochester GBI study were clear, others are less so, Turner admitted.
“The question we don’t really have a good answer to is, what would happen if we scaled these programs up on a larger level?” he asked.
Still, even limited studies gather useful information — and allow comparisons to other policy interventions designed to support low-income households.
“I think all policy choices when we’re thinking about how to use our scarce government resources should be based on rigorous evidence,” Turner said. “And I think we’re generating rigorous evidence around guaranteed basic income studies — what their promises are, and what their limitations are.”
The Stanford University Basic Income Lab, the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research, and Mayors for a Guaranteed Income collaborated to visualize data from evaluations of more than 30 guaranteed income pilots across the United States.
Among the 8,746 total participants with spending data, the largest share of expenditures (35%) went to retail sales and services. Food and groceries were the second highest (33%). Transport and housing/utilities were both at 9%, followed by financial transactions (6%) and travel/leisure/entertainment (4%). Healthcare, miscellaneous, and educational expenses made up the final 5%.
“These studies are just sort of one-time experiments,” observed Kevin Corinth, a senior fellow and deputy director of the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute. “If we ever do something like universal basic income, it would be throughout the country — everyone would get it; it would be permanent. So it’s kind of hard to learn about a permanent nationwide policy from a temporary, one-year or two-year pilot that was done in one locality among only a select number of people.”
In the 1970s, Republican President Richard Nixon suggested a “negative” income tax: The government would set a minimum revenue level, then pay citizens the difference between it and their income. The proposal didn’t pass Congress.
“I think the best evidence we have of the effect of whether or not you have work-conditioned benefits — which is sort of the alternative to (GBI) — is from the 1990s welfare reform period, where we did something on a national scale and you made it permanent,” Corinth said. “We were going from a cash welfare program that was unconditional, and paid you more not to work, to a regime where we had work requirements; where you didn’t get the benefits unless you worked enough.”
“And what you saw during that period was a big increase in employment that showed up in the national data — like a 10% point increase in employment of single parents with kids. You saw substantially falling poverty rates among kids, and you saw these programs improved the test scores of kids and improved their long-run outcomes. It’s old evidence — just now 30 years old — but that was something we did at the national level,” concluded Corinth, “which conditioned benefits on work, and saw really positive impacts on unemployment, on poverty, and on the well-being of kids.”
Corinth agreed with Turner that even limited GBI studies can be informative.
“It’s useful to know that — at least if you do (a) one- or two-year period and for this select group of people — what will happen? We’re learning from it,” he said. “But it’s not conclusive on its own, regardless of what it says.”
Government assistance and Catholicism
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis — in an Easter Sunday 2020 letter to leaders of global social movements — suggested a wider discussion of GBI.
“This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out,” Pope Francis wrote to the leaders.
Government assistance is not, however, a modern idea.
In his 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” Pope Leo XIII outlined when the government should help families: “True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.”
Lelaine Bigelow, executive director of the Georgetown University Center on Poverty and Inequality, urged politicians to examine both their attitudes and their choices.
“How do we get people to understand the investment it takes, and stop really blaming people for being in poverty when a lot of times it’s not their fault?” asked Bigelow. “There are structural inequities built into our economic system that are part of decades-long policy decisions.”
“I think the important thing to convey to lawmakers is that when we build policies around short timelines — like election cycles and pilot programs — we aren’t going to see the long-term effects to eradicate poverty,” she said. “Poverty is a long-term issue, and short-term solutions — for an issue that takes a lot of investment and effort — is a mismatch.”
A change of perspective is also needed, suggested Bigelow.
“Our programs are very siloed — and people in poverty don’t live silo lives. That goes back to why the guaranteed income program works — because it’s so flexible. People have different needs every month. They might need to pay for rent. They might need more money for food. They might need more money for transportation that month,” she explained.
“And so when I think about designing anti-poverty programs, I don’t think about block granting and having one big, inadequately funded program,” she said.” I think about, how can we design something that really addresses the lives that people live?”
Ultimately, Bigelow said, the issue of addressing Americans’ poverty is a matter of priorities.
“Poverty is a policy choice,” she concluded. “Lawmakers make these choices — whether it is for defense, whether it is for SNAP benefits, whether it is for housing — we make those choices.”
Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia.
