Malawa says now is as good a time as any to try. But advocates of cash-payment programs are hoping that the COVID-19 stimulus checks, growing bodies of research showing the positive impact of payments like America’s Earned Income Tax Credit, and successful direct cash experiments abroad will give the idea momentum in the U.S. So far, most long-term supplemental cash experiments have been run as small pilot projects reliant on private funding-including the Abundant Birth Project, which got its money largely from foundations with some support from San Francisco’s Department of Public Health. “But we in this country have a system where even when you work really, really hard, sometimes even at multiple jobs, oftentimes you can’t meet all of your basic needs with the money that you earn.”

Zea Malawa, who leads Expecting Justice, an initiative that aims to address San Francisco’s birth inequities and which is running the Abundant Birth Project. “There’s so many negative narratives around low-income families, and in particular, low-income Black families as being people who waste welfare dollars, who are always trying to scam benefits systems,” says Dr. Local governments are cash-strapped, while researchers, policymakers and beneficiaries of these programs face persistent stereotypes around the notion of no-strings attached cash and how the money will be spent. But no matter how successful direct payment programs may become, significant barriers remain to implementing them on a larger scale. Other countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden offer parents a universal child benefit. There’s evidence it could work: a similar program launched in the nearby city of Stockton in 2019 helped some of the city’s poorest residents improve both their health and finances. to focus on how guaranteed cash assistance affects health outcomes for pregnant moms and their babies, and Chand has come on board as a community researcher. The San Francisco program will be the first pilot in the U.S.

“We in this country have a system where even when you work really, really hard, sometimes even at multiple jobs, oftentimes you can't meet all of your basic needs with the money that you earn.” Entrepreneur Andrew Yang made UBI central to his 2020 presidential campaign, and the urgency of the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic spurred Congress to send Americans three rounds of one-time direct payments to provide emergency financial relief and stimulate the economy. Long considered pie-in-the-sky ideas in the U.S., guaranteed income and universal basic income (UBI) programs have gained increasing attention over the last couple of years.

On Tuesday, New York University announced the establishment of its new Cash Transfer Lab, which will study the impact of policies like these. In the last five years, similar programs have been designed in at least half a dozen cities. The experiment is the latest in a growing collection of programs across the nation that aim to address systemic poverty, inequality, and racism not by reworking fragmented safety net programs, but by giving additional cash directly to people in need. Starting this summer, the Abundant Birth Project will give $1,000 per month to 150 Black and Pacific Islander mothers for the duration of their pregnancies and the first six months of their children’s lives. Now, a new pilot program in San Francisco aims to use the once-radical idea of guaranteed income to help new mothers just like her.

Sfsu project heartbeat