Basic Income Guarantee - Examples of Implementation

Examples of Implementation

The U.S. State of Alaska has a system which provides each citizen with a share of the state's oil revenues, although this amount is not necessarily enough to live on. The Alaska basic income is subject to income tax on the federal level. That way the "basic income" works like a negative income tax but with a "prebate" instead of a "rebate" (as far as state finances are concerned).

The U.S. also has an earned income tax credit for low-income taxpayers. In 2006 a bill written by members of the advocacy organization USBIG to transform the credit into a partial basic income was introduced in the US Congress but did not pass.

The city of Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada took part in an experimental basic income program ("Mincome") between 1974 and 1979.

From January 2008 to December 2009, a pilot project with a basic income grant was implemented in the Namibian village of Omitara by the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition. Six months after the launch, the project has been found to significantly reduce child malnutrition and increase school attendance. It was also found to increase the community's income significantly above the actual amount from the grants as it allowed citizens to partake in more productive economic activities. The project team states that this increase in economic activity contradicts critics' claims that a basic income would lead to laziness and dependency. After the conclusion of the Pilot Project, a monthly bridging-allowance to all who participated in the pilot was paid regularly until March 2012. One of the conclusions of the project was that, even with the restriction that only residents of the village for over a year since the pilot's start could benefit from the grant, there was a significant migration towards Otjivero-Omitara, despite the fact that the migrants wouldn't receive the grant. The project concluded that this phenomenon reveals the need to introduce such basic income systems as a universal national grant, in order to avoid migration to particular regions, towns or households. Another finding of the project was that after the introduction of the pilot, overall crime rates fell by 42%, and specifically stock theft fell by 43% and other theft by nearly 20%.

In 2011, Iran implemented a basic income grant in order to compensate risen prices of basic goods such as petrol and food.