A basic income program in central Iowa gave more than 100 participants monthly $500 payments with no strings attached. A year after the final payments were made, researchers are sharing how that money affected low-income households.
The Central Iowa Basic Income Pilot, also called UpLift, was a research project that looked at what happened when households received a basic income payment each month for two years.
Starting in May 2023, 110 participants in Polk, Dallas and Warren counties received the monthly support. To qualify, they had to have annual household earnings at 60% or below the median income for the area. People living alone were excluded.
Project leaders wanted to see how the money affected aspects of the participants’ lives, like affordability, caregiving and mental health. They compared their results to a control group that did not receive any money.
Lead researchers Stacia West and Amy Castro of the University of Pennsylvania presented key takeaways to community leaders this week at the Des Moines Heritage Center.
West said throughout the project they learned that basic income payments didn’t completely restore financial well-being for Iowans, but it gave participants the chance to imagine a pathway forward in several aspects of their lives.
“It caused improvements in savings, it caused reductions in stress, it bolstered agency, pathways, importance, awareness and reliance,” she said.
One of their findings was unique to Iowa compared to other places that have done this kind of program. West said Iowa is the only place they’ve seen significant changes in scores relating to hope, and increases in mattering and self-reliance.
Castro described hope as the ability to create goals and feel capable of working toward them. Mattering, she said, looks at how validated or seen someone feels by the people that have power over their lives.
“It means, does anybody know that I’m here? Does anybody actually care that I’m working 65 hours a week in a diner outside of Des Moines? Does anybody care that I can’t afford to feed my children?” she explained.
They found that the money didn’t cause participants to create new goals, but that they felt more capable of pursuing them.
“I love this quote here from Ellie who said, ‘The $500 was so awesome because it’s like, I’m part of the middleman group where you get forgotten. And because I’m not struggling enough to actually get the help I need, but I’m not making enough money to survive,'” Castro said.
Families working low-wage jobs often get stuck in this middle ground, she said, where unpredictable work schedules also make it harder for them to consistently meet their children’s needs.
“And what we saw, in your study really specifically, was parents reporting to us that they had an increase in availability for not just predictability in their scheduling but also an increase in the amount of presence, and time and engagement that they had with their kids,” Castro said.
Another finding unique to Iowa showed that participants were able to invest in saving methods that benefited them long term and short term. They saw people were able to stretch the monthly pay a lot further than they’ve seen in other states — something called “nested financial logic.”
“Where the steps that they took financially, from literally day one, tended to have short- and long-term goals bundled together in one step,” Castro said.
West said there weren’t differences in total incomes because the study took place during a time of historic inflation.
“At the same time that this money was being delivered, we also see increases in grocery prices, increases in rent, and additionally destruction of specific programs and structures that were there to hold people up,” she said.
She said the money did make participants feel secure enough to weigh their financial options and they reported significantly less stress. But common barriers people face, like the cost of living and access to healthcare, didn’t disappear.
“Rent was never going to be affordable, the tuition was never going to work with the budget, right?” West said. “So, this is kind of the arc of what we’re seeing here and leads us toward different programming from the learnings that we have with Uplift that can take these finding and pair them with other programs.”
Researchers were able to complete their study even though a 2024 state law prohibits local governments from participating in similar programs in the future.
