Has UBI been attempted?

1. Historical experiments and the long tail of evidence

UBI-style testing is not new: scholars point to four U.S. experiments in the late 1960s and 1970s run as negative-income-tax designs, which produced measurable but modest reductions in labor supply (around 17% among women and 7% among men in some analyses) and helped create the methodological template for later pilots ^[1]. Finland completed a nationwide randomized trial in recent years that researchers and consultants still cite as a rare national RCT of basic income, though analysts warn RCTs in public policy are difficult and results are not easily generalized ^[2].

2. City-level pilots: Stockton, Compton and dozens more

A wave of municipal experiments in the U.S. has tested unconditional monthly stipends: Stockton’s SEED program gave $500 a month to randomly selected residents and reported improved employment prospects, financial stability and wellbeing after one year ^[3], while Compton’s program became one of the largest city-based experiments by number served as dozens of U.S. cities launched pilots in the late 2010s and early 2020s ^[6]. National networks and private donors — including Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and philanthropists like Jack Dorsey — have funded many local pilots, shaping both the scale and the research questions asked ^[6].

3. Large NGO and international trials: GiveDirectly and global mapping

GiveDirectly has run the world’s largest and longest-term UBI study beginning in Kenya and expanding to other African countries, distributing millions to tens of thousands of individuals across hundreds of villages and explicitly distinguishing long-term cash transfers from shorter emergency payments ^{[4] [7]}. Academic centers such as Stanford’s Basic Income Lab maintain a global map documenting dozens of experiments and variants, showing a diverse ecosystem of pilots, RCTs and policy experiments worldwide ^[8].

4. Recent large-scale randomized evidence in the U.S.

A recent randomized experiment across counties in Texas and Illinois provided $1,000 per month to 1,000 low-income people for three years (with a larger control group receiving $50/month), producing peer-reviewed analysis of employment effects and feeding a debated literature on labor supply, income changes and wellbeing ^[5]. Media coverage of the same multi-county effort summarized broader findings and participants’ stories, while conservative commentators have highlighted decreases in hours worked and net income effects to argue against nationwide adoption ^{[9] [10]}.

5. What the pilots show — benefits, limits and contested interpretation

Across studies, recurring findings include improvements in financial stability, mental health and some measures of economic activity, with mixed effects on labor supply: some trials found modest reductions in hours, others found increased employment or entrepreneurship, and GiveDirectly’s Kenya study found recipients invested and earned more in that context — yet researchers caution that outcomes depend heavily on design (amount, duration, universality), local conditions and whether pilots are short-term or long-term ^{[7] [3] [9] [2]}. Critics and supporters interpret the same evidence differently: advocates emphasize wellbeing and poverty reduction, funders in tech warn of automation risks and promote pilots as preparation for labor-market shifts, while skeptics point to cost, work disincentives in some analyses, and the challenge of scaling pilots to national policy ^{[11] [10] [6]}.

6. The unresolved question: pilots ≠ full-scale policy

Although many pilots have been attempted and provide valuable causal evidence and operational lessons, researchers and commentators repeatedly warn that experiments—especially those run by NGOs or limited to selected cities or demographics—cannot fully predict the political, fiscal and behavioral effects of a universal, permanent national UBI; thus the field contains robust empirical work but not consensus on nationwide implementation ^{[8] [2] [4]}.