Conversation #78

In recent years, a substantial number of U.S. cities have introduced basic income policies. The proliferation of this novel approach to social protection in a country marked by skepticism towards any social spending, raises the possibility that European cities will soon move on the policy. The central idea of basic income is regular, unconditional cash transfers. The goal of universal basic income designates everybody a recipient regardless of means. Cities have become steppingstones to this policy, trialing targeted basic income schemes focused on selected groups of citizens facing barriers to economic security.

Cities have a lot of reasons to pass on basic income. Basic income proposes the transformation of the welfare state, a politically risky maneuver in the best of circumstances, and one that seems to earmark basic income as a subject for national politics. Furthermore, it ties elected officials to no-strings-attached cash transfers – regular, payments that individuals can use any way they wish, including on expenditures that might make for embarrassing campaign material. Above all, basic income is expensive, and it is seen by many as a policy intervention that cities simply cannot afford. So, why is Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham demanding basic income for the Manchester city region? And why are cities in the highly improbable location of the U.S. taking the plunge?

There are two answers to the question. First, cities are desperate. The global housing cost crisis, austerity from central states, and the rising, endemic problem of economic precariousness have proved the wisdom of Daniel Burnham’s dictum make no small plans. As the housing cost crunch moves up the income ladder and an ever-expanding portion of the population finds itself a broken boiler or curtailed work schedule away from crisis, small, technocratic interventions like job training schemes and slightly expanded housing assistance fall too short to register with voters.

The result in Europe, North America and even outside high-income democracies, has been a full-throated resurgence of progressive urban political coalitions: The vague verte that swept green politicians into hôtels de ville across France, the elevation of progressives and democratic socialists to mayor in Chicago, New York, Boston and dozens of other American cities, and the surprising political acceptance of new municipalism and other heterodox economic approaches. The conclusion is thrilling and sobering at once: Cities are turning to basic income because their votes are desperate.

The other answer is more optimistic. Basic income appears to work, both as policy and politics. We know this because dozens of U.S. cities have taken the plunge. Buoyed by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the Biden Administration stimulus program that allocated a quarter-trillion in unrestricted cash to municipalities, mayors across the states decided to try basic income trials. The results were surprising, for three reasons.

First, no-strings-attached cash transfers were popular with voters. In Chicago, the short application period for Chicago Resilient Communities, which paid $500 a month to 5,000 recipients, netted more than 175,000 applications. Citizens’ interest in literal free money is not surprising, but the lack of backlash is a different story. My research with basic income trials in the U.S. revealed extraordinary caution on the part of the cities implementing them: Everything from program names to data collection on expenditures to budgets for collecting participants’ individual stories, was designed to parry accusations that basic income recipients would spend foolishly or selfishly. The backlash never materialized. While enterprising conservative politicians made a point of demonizing basic income, they were voices in the figurative wilderness. Voters liked cash.

Second, basic income reliably improved recipients’ lives. We know this because nearly ever basic income pilot has been accompanied by a research team conducting surveys, interviews and difference-in-difference statistical tests. Regardless of differences in geographies, populations and the amount of cash stipends, recipients reported being less stressed; sleeping better; feeling happier; and spending more time with family and community. Equally important, the boogeyman of joblessness didn’t show up. On balance, basic income recipients either worked the same amount or a bit more (Doussard and Quinn, 2024).

This surprising finding functions as an indictment of the dismal precariousness endemic among low-wage workers in the U.S. As interviews with basic income recipients revealed, cash transfers provided the means to remove barriers to work. Recipients reported simple expenditures that allowed them to seek more hours or better jobs: They fixed their cars, purchased childcare, acquired expensive hypertension medication and so forth.

Basic income’s path to relevance in European cities will likely flow through the third, and most striking aspect of U.S. basic income trials, the development of problem-specific basic income programs. Keying on the insight that cash offers flexibility and fungibility, community organizations across the U.S. pressed for trials of basic income among populations with extensive barriers to economic security. The result removed the universal from universal basic income but enhanced the reputation of cash as an all-purpose problem solver.

A random sample of programs makes the point: The Denver Basic Income Project provided basic income to people experiencing homelessness, with the result of recipients being far more likely to find housing. Gainseville, Florida’s Just Income provided basic income to people exiting incarceration; its recipients were more likely than other recently released people to hold jobs and avoid recidivism. In Atlanta, the In her Hands basic income program gave regular cash transfers to new mothers. Most strikingly, policy entrepreneurs in Michigan converted a portion of the state’s misallocated basic welfare provisions to make a series of unconditional cash payments to new mothers in the poor, majority black city of Flint.

The surprising and fluid shapes basic income has taken in the U.S. offers some insight for European cities. Returning to Manchester, the most recent proposal for basic income, from the Common Sense Policy Group at Northumbria University, makes the path forward clear. It is a proposal for basic income for youth at risk of homelessness. This makes sense in political-economic terms: The problem of precariousness lacks focal points and constituencies. Visible homelessness, by contrast, is a thorn in the side of mayors everywhere, the kind of impossible-to-ignore problem that commands action. Time will tell if Manchester becomes the first European city to take the plunge on basic income, but the moment will arrive somewhere, soon enough: Cash is too flexible and too effective, and cities’ economic problems are too multiple, for basic income to remain a novelty for long.

References:

Common Sense Policy Group. (2025). Basic Income for Greater Manchester: Plans for a feasible, affordable and popular pilot. Doussard, M., & Quinn, K. (2024). Planning with a Basic Income; Achieving Equity Planning Goals with no-Strings-Attached Cash. Journal of the American Planning Association, 91(1), 46–57. Van Parijs, P., & Vanderborght, Y. (2017). Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Harvard University Press.