A new guaranteed income pilot will give Georgia poor black women hundreds of dollars a month to improve their financial stability, mental health, and bridge the racial wealth gap.
the Program called In Her Hands, will provide approximately $ 850 unconditionally in cash for up to 650 black women for two years. It kicks off early next year and has more than $ 13 million in payout and is poised to become one of the largest guaranteed income pilot programs in the United States
Led by the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund, a coalition of local elected officials and nonprofits, and the nonprofit GiveDirectly, the program will include participants who live in Atlanta and other parts of suburban and rural Georgia and who live near or below the state poverty line Life.
The program examines how such unconditional cash transfers affect the participants’ financial and mental wellbeing.
It’s started on purpose in Atlanta – a city with some of the most pronounced income inequalities in the US – and especially in its Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up and promoted the idea of a guaranteed income.
The middle black family in the U.S. has $ 3,600 in net worth – about 2% of the $ 147,000 the average white family owns, per 2019 research by the Institute for Policy Studies. And in Georgia roughly 26% of black women live in poverty, compared with 14% of white women.
Black women are also disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis, more likely than other groups. Job loss andexpulsion. And have blacks overall in the US experienced higher rates of Hospitalization and death from the coronavirus as white people.
“Black women are among the groups most likely to experience liquidity squeezes that make it difficult to meet basic needs. This is not the result of bad decisions; it is the result of the pervasive economic uncertainty that is having the greatest impact on women and communities of color, ”said Hope Wollensack, executive director of the GRO Fund, in a press release. “A guaranteed income is a step towards a more just and just economy.”
The story goes on
Hope Wollensack, managing director of the GRO Fund, speaks at an event. (Photo: Munir Meghjani)
The idea of guaranteed income or free, unconditional money to improve the economic and other outcomes of low-income people is not new. It was nice tested on a large scale in countries such as Kenya and India with positive results, including improved nutrition, and in Finlandwhere recipients reported improvements in their health and wellbeing. Give directly, the nonprofit leading the pilot in Georgia, ran the world’s largest and longest Universal Basic Income Experiment in Kenya.
In the US, other guaranteed income projects have shown promise. In Stockton, California, transferred $ 500 in cash to 125 people every month for a year. Research found that recipients had better job prospects, improved mental health, and used the money to purchase basic necessities.
Magnolia now has Mother’s Trust in Mississippi. for a year gave $ 1,000 a month to black motherswho said it made a difference in their lives. and Oakland, California, is currently running a guaranteed income program that donates $ 500 in cash each month to 600 low-income families of color.
In the United States, a 2019 federal report found that nearly 40% of Americans would not be able to cover a $ 400 surprise expense.
With this in mind, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) introduced a law earlier this year that would create a state guaranteed income program Sending $ 1,200 a month direct to most Americans. In promoting the legislation, Omar pointed to the success of the government’s own experiment in giving cash to the people: millions of Americans received three rounds of stimulus checks during the pandemic. These payments were found that economic hardship is being significantly alleviated, Helping people buy groceries and paying bills, and may have helped reduce anxiety and depression in some people.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.