When Mayor Brandon Scott announced an unprecedented direct investment into Baltimore residents, a guaranteed income pilot program that will give 200 randomly selected young adult parents in the city $1,000 a month for 24 months, with no strings attached, he joined a wave of mayors across the country who are investing in people who need it most.
Baltimore’s pilot is critical to the nation, as it will be among the first to focus on how guaranteed income influences the health of family and family members. While these initiatives have often focused on improving people’s financial standing, there has been a missed opportunity to understand the full power of guaranteed income initiatives on other parts of people’s lives.
While ideas of guaranteed income have been in the U.S. since at least the 1960s, and were even championed by people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as part of racial and economic equity, the U.S. has yet to see a widespread national implementation of a guaranteed income for families who have been struggling. There have been other types of guaranteed income, such as the oil reserves that Alaskan residents receive, and the supplemental income that Indigenous peoples receive when casinos are placed on their reservations, but nothing national and widespread that can help U.S. families meet their needs and build wealth.
