Universal Basic Income: Did the Pilots Work?
A decade ago, universal basic income was a seminar argument. Then real governments and charities ran it: Finland paid 2,000 unemployed people €560 a month; Ontario paid thousands of low-income residents before cancelling the pilot early; Stockton, California paid 125 residents $500 a month; Germany paid 122 people €1,200 a month for three years; Wales paid care leavers £1,600 a month; and GiveDirectly has been paying Kenyan villagers a basic income since 2017.
This video traces where the idea came from - Milton Friedman's 1962 negative income tax and Richard Nixon's 1971 Family Assistance Plan, which passed the House and died in the Senate - through each of those pilots' own published results, to a 2026 comparative review of nine pilots and England's still-unfunded proposal for a pilot of its own.
The pattern across every pilot is consistent: work did not fall, and wellbeing rose. What no two-or-three-year pilot, funded outside the ordinary tax system, can answer is whether a country can afford to do this permanently. That is the question the last decade left standing, not the one it settled.
Every figure on screen is traced to its own dated source; two figures reported in earlier research for this video were corrected after reading the primary report, and are flagged as corrections in the accompanying fact sheet.
In these topics
Tags
Chapters
- The question AI put back on the table
- What UBI actually means
- Where the idea came from
- Finland's national experiment
- Ontario's cancelled pilot
- Stockton's cash experiment
- Germany's three-year study
- Wales and the care leavers pilot
- A global south comparison
- The 2026 scorecard
- England's next pilots
- What a pilot can't tell you
Sources and credits
Photo credits (Wikimedia Commons)
- Milton Friedman, economist who proposed the negative income tax: UPI, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMilton_Friedman_1976.jpg
- Richard Nixon, proposed the 1971 Family Assistance Plan: Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. (ca. 1974 - 05/15/1984), Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARichard_Nixon_presidential_portrait_%281%29.jpg
- Helsinki Market Square seafront, Finland: Ypsilon from Finland, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHelsinki_Kauppatori_seafront.jpg
- Downtown Stockton, California: LPS.1, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADowntown_Stockton_California.jpg
- Residential apartment building, Berlin: Leonhard Lenz, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AResidential_building_Angerburger_Allee_seen_from_Drachenberg_Berlin_2020-09-14_01.jpg
- Senedd, Welsh Parliament building, Cardiff Bay: User: (WT-shared) Cardiff at wts wikivoyage, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASenedd%2C_Welsh_parliament%2C_Cardiff_Bay.jpg
- Rural village enclosure, Isiolo County, Kenya: Matthew Groenewold / U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABoma_%28enclosure%29_in_Isiolo_County%2C_Kenya%2C_2018.jpg
- Automated Storage and Retrieval System, warehouse automation: Lance Cheung, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAutomated_Storage_and_Retrieval_System_-_Defense_Visual_Information_Center_%C2%B7_DD-ST-96-00253.JPEG
Primary sources
- Kela (Finnish Social Insurance Institution), Basic Income Experiment 2017-2018, final results released 6 May 2020; summarised by Finland's Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (stm.fi) and VATT (vatt.fi) - 2,000 people, €560/month, +6 days worked over 2 years, wellbeing gains.
- Government of Ontario, Ontario Basic Income Pilot brochure, April 2017 (files.ontario.ca) - ~4,000 residents, up to CAD $16,989/year; McMaster University / Toronto Metropolitan University, 'Southern Ontario's Basic Income Experience', 2020 - 217-person follow-up survey, ~75% still working.
- Stacia Martin-West (University of Tennessee) and Amy Castro Baker (University of Pennsylvania), SEED year-one preliminary analysis, released 2 March 2021 - 125 residents, $500/month, Feb 2019-Feb 2021, +12 percentage points full-time employment.
- DIW Berlin / Mein Grundeinkommen e.V., Pilotprojekt Grundeinkommen press release, published 9 April 2025 (diw.de) - 122 people, €1,200/month, June 2021-May 2024, no reduction in working hours, wellbeing gains quantified.
- GiveDirectly, Kenya universal basic income study summary (givedirectly.org/kenya), cross-checked against public-radio coverage of the published two-year results (KUOW/WFAE/Connecticut Public, December 2023) - ~5,000 recipients since 2017, ~$20/month, 12-year commitment, ~60% rise in high-value assets.
- Sarah Sachar, 'Universal Basic Income Pilots: Comparative Outcomes and Design Lessons', Newport International Journal of Current Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2026 (KIU Publications, publications.kiu.ac.ug/5141) - named as a single-author comparative review, not settled consensus.
- Nixon Presidential Library welfare-reform history (nixonlibrary.gov) and U.S. Senate Finance Committee's own archived 1970 bill text (finance.senate.gov), cross-checked against the public legislative record - Family Assistance Plan passed the House June 1971, died in the Senate Finance Committee, dropped before Nixon signed a narrower bill in October 1972.
Not regulated financial advice.