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February 2021 newsletter

Our research

The budget-neutral Family Security Act would reduce child poverty and inequality. We evaluate Senator Mitt Romney’s child allowance bill on poverty, tax progressivity, and simplicity of the tax and benefit system. Watch our video on the Family Security Act and other child allowance research.
Max Ghenis and Nate Golden
The effect of universal basic income on a novel measure of the racial wealth gap [US]. We go beyond mean and median to measure the racial wealth gap across the full wealth distribution, under the status quo and different UBI scenarios.
Will Fedder and Max Ghenis
Panel on basic income [Global]. Max Ghenis and Stacey Rutland, founder and president of the Income Movement, discussed the politics and policy of basic income in a forum organized by the California Yang Gang.

Basic income in Stockton reduced income volatility, depression, and anxiety, and increased full-time employment [US]. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration gave 125 recipients $500 per month for 24 months beginning in February 2019. Its first evaluation found positive effects on recipients over the first year compared to a control group.
Cash assistance is more popular than paid family leave, subsidized childcare, wage subsidies, and baby bonds [US]. The survey of 2,000 Americans aged 18 to 50 found that cash assistance was especially popular among parents and people with income below $70,000.
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) target households who forgo child income [Mexico]. Conditioning cash transfers on schooling targets families that lose income from child labor, offsetting efficiency loss from CCTs’ exclusion of some poor households. Researchers claim that the targeting justifies retaining a third of the budget for Progresa, a CCT program in rural Mexico, as conditional rather than unconditional.

House passes relief package including $1,400 payments per person [US]. The payments include all dependents and phase out for incomes above $75,000 for singles or $150,000 for couples. The Senate is currently negotiating their own bill, and eleven Senators are calling for monthly checks. See our emergency cash transfer proposal tracker for more details.
Gary, Indiana will give 125 residents $500 a month for a year [US]. The Guaranteed Income Validation Effort (GIVE) pilot program is privately funded in partnership with the Centers for Income Research.
Liberal MP introduces bill to establish a national strategy for a guaranteed basic income [Canada]. Julie Dzerowicz introduced Bill C-273, the first basic income bill in Canada’s House of Commons.