Economic Security Project commits $10 million to U.S. basic income research

Story: 2016 C.E.  |  Last updated: December 8, 2016

For most of its history, universal basic income has been a thought experiment — a policy idea that circulates through academic papers and dinner-table arguments without ever being rigorously tested at scale. In late 2016 C.E., a coalition of technologists, activists, investors, and researchers decided to change that, putting serious money behind the question of whether guaranteed cash payments could strengthen the economic floor for Americans.

What the announcement showed

• Universal basic income research: The Economic Security Project committed $10 million over two years to fund U.S.-based studies, pilot programs, and policy work exploring whether a guaranteed income floor could reduce poverty and expand economic opportunity.
• Coalition breadth: More than 100 signatories signed the group’s statement of belief — a range that included Y Combinator president Sam Altman, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and leaders from the Black Lives Matter movement.
• Cash transfer evidence: Prior research on direct cash transfers in lower-income countries showed gains in earnings, school attendance, and health outcomes — and consistently disproved fears that recipients would spend money on alcohol or cigarettes.

Why 2016 C.E. was the moment

The Economic Security Project launched its announcement on December 8, 2016 C.E. — one month after the U.S. presidential election. That timing was not accidental.

Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder and one of the initiative’s key organizers, said the election sharpened the group’s sense of urgency. “The economy is broken today,” he said, “and we have to think about rebalancing and making it work for people in 2016 rather than waiting for some far-off future to arrive.” The conversation had shifted. Where automation and artificial intelligence had once seemed like distant threats to middle-class employment, they now felt immediate — and politically combustible.

The coalition brought together voices that rarely share a platform. Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, found himself making common cause with libertarians and conservatives who had their own reasons to support guaranteed income — among them, a preference for direct cash over a complicated web of government programs. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach, and Rebuild the Dream co-founder Natalie Foster were also among the signatories.

What the evidence had already shown

Universal basic income had been partially tested before — in the United States and Canada during the 1960s and 1970s, and in parts of India more recently. Those trials were short-lived and underfunded, but they were suggestive. Research on direct cash transfers in Kenya and other low-income settings showed that recipients invested in productive assets, kept their children in school longer, and improved their health outcomes. The feared surge in spending on alcohol or cigarettes did not materialize — and in some cases, such spending actually fell.

What remained genuinely unknown was how a basic income would function in a wealthy, high-cost economy like the United States. Would it reduce work incentives? Would it replace existing social programs, or supplement them? Would its benefits reach people in rural communities, in cities, across racial and economic lines, in equal measure? These were the questions the Economic Security Project intended to pursue.

The initiative was organized not just to fund research, but to build the infrastructure for a serious policy conversation — connecting pilot projects, academic studies, and advocacy work in a way that fragmented earlier efforts never had.

Lasting impact

The Economic Security Project’s 2016 C.E. commitment helped catalyze what became a wave of U.S.-based basic income experiments over the following decade. Stockton, California ran one of the first municipally funded guaranteed income pilots in 2019 C.E., providing $500 a month to 125 residents — and its published results showed improvements in full-time employment, mental health, and financial stability. Mayors in dozens of American cities subsequently formed a coalition to push similar programs.

The broader conversation ESP helped launch also shifted the terms of the policy debate. Guaranteed income moved from fringe proposal to mainstream consideration across the political spectrum — appearing in Democratic presidential platforms and in libertarian think tank papers alike. The coalition’s early insistence that “financial security should be a human right” put a value frame around what had previously been treated as a purely technical question.

Internationally, Finland ran a two-year basic income experiment from 2017 C.E. to 2018 C.E., and its results pointed to improved wellbeing and modest employment gains. These studies collectively built an evidentiary base that simply did not exist before efforts like ESP’s took hold.

Blindspots and limits

The Economic Security Project’s 2016 C.E. announcement reflected a coalition weighted heavily toward Silicon Valley and progressive labor — its own statement acknowledged the absence of prominent Republican voices. That gap matters: in the United States, economic policy debates rarely translate into durable law without cross-partisan support, and a program funded primarily by tech investors carries its own set of assumptions about who the economy is failing and why. The question of how a universal basic income would interact with existing safety-net programs — whether it would supplement or replace Medicaid, food assistance, housing vouchers — remained unresolved and, in some configurations, potentially harmful to the people it aimed to help.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Quartz — Universal basic income gets a real test

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Global suicide rate has fallen by 40% since 1995
• Indigenous land rights recognized across 160 million hectares ahead of COP30
• The Good News for Humankind archive on economic security

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