UBI Programs

United States

OnRamp is a 12-month guaranteed income pilot launched in June 2023 by the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) and the Academy of Country Music (ACM) for 20 young, Black artists and industry professionals in the Nashville, Tennessee music community. Each participant received a $1,000 unconditional monthly stipend distributed via the Steady platform, along with mentorship, professional development, and industry access. The program was designed to address racial inequities documented in BMAC's 2022 report 'Three Chords & The ACTUAL Truth' on Black representation in country music. It was funded by BMAC, ACM, and industry partners, and administered with support from social impact agency BreatheWithMe. The inaugural (and only publicly documented) cohort ran from June 2023 through May 2024.

Canada

The Ontario Basic Income Pilot was a Government of Ontario program that provided monthly guaranteed income payments to about 4,000 low-income adults aged 18-64 in Hamilton, Brantford/Brant County, Thunder Bay, and Lindsay, testing effects on poverty, health, and employment. It was funded entirely by the provincial government and offered up to CAD $16,989/year for singles and $24,027/year for couples, reduced by 50 cents per dollar earned, plus a disability supplement of up to $6,000/year. Launched in 2017 under the Liberal government with a planned three-year run, it was cancelled early by the newly elected Progressive Conservative government in August 2018, with final payments made in March 2019. The abrupt cancellation prompted a class-action lawsuit by former participants against the province.

United States

Oregon Direct Cash Transfers Plus (DCT+) is a two-year unconditional cash pilot for young adults ages 18-24 experiencing homelessness in Multnomah, Clackamas, and Deschutes counties (Portland, Sandy, Bend). Launched in February 2023 by the Oregon Department of Human Services' Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program (YEHP) in partnership with Point Source Youth, it paired $1,000 monthly cash payments and a $3,000 one-time enrichment fund with voluntary case management and housing navigation delivered through community partners NAYA, Antfarm, and JBarJ Youth Services. The initial 120-participant pilot was funded through an interagency agreement between ODHS and Oregon Housing and Community Services (public funding). An evaluation by researcher Young People to the Front found 94% of surveyed participants were housed at program exit. The program has since expanded to a second 120-participant cohort including Jackson County/Medford, partly funded through a philanthropic donation and state legislation.

United States

The Osage ARP Cash Assistance Program was a one-time cash assistance program run by the Osage Nation's Financial Assistance Department, funded through the tribe's American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocation. Enrolled Osage Nation members who attested to a negative economic impact from the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency could receive up to $2,000 by check. The Osage Nation Congress appropriated $35 million of its $108 million ARPA allocation for the program. The application portal opened August 4, 2021 and closed September 1, 2022.

Namibia

The world's first village-wide universal basic income pilot, run from January 2008 to December 2009 in the Otjivero-Omitara settlement near Windhoek, Namibia. All residents registered as living there in July 2007 who were under age 60 received an unconditional monthly cash grant of N$100, funded by a coalition of Namibian civil society and church groups with international donor support. After the two-year pilot ended, a smaller monthly bridging allowance (N$80) continued to be paid to participants until March 2012. The pilot documented sharp reductions in poverty, child malnutrition, and crime, alongside increases in school attendance and small-business activity.

Philippines

The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is the Philippine national government's flagship conditional cash transfer program, run by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and institutionalized under Republic Act No. 11310 (2019). It gives poor and near-poor households with children aged 0-18 (and/or a pregnant member) monthly health, education, and rice-subsidy grants in exchange for compliance with health check-up, school attendance, and parenting-session conditions. The program is funded entirely by the Philippine national government budget (General Appropriations Act) and currently reaches roughly 4.4 million households nationwide.

United States

The Paterson Guaranteed Income Pilot Program, administered by the City of Paterson, provided $400 monthly unconditional cash payments to 110 low-income residents from July 2021 to June 2022. The pilot was funded through private sources as part of the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI) coalition and Guaranteed Income Community of Practice (GICP). Research and evaluation were conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy & Practice and its Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR).

United States

Path Home is a Portland, Oregon nonprofit whose mission is to help homeless families with children get back into housing and stay there. Its Basic Income Guarantee (Cash Transfer) program, seeded by a private individual donor, gives $575 per month for 24 months to formerly homeless, now-housed families with children who have earned income. Unitus Community Credit Union direct-deposits the funds into fee-free bank accounts it set up for participants, and Path Home tracks outcomes in-house through case management and quarterly surveys rather than an external research institution.

Jamaica

PATH is Jamaica's flagship conditional cash transfer programme, administered by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, providing bi-monthly cash grants to poor and vulnerable households to improve educational attainment and health outcomes and to reduce child labour. It targets children, pregnant/lactating women, the elderly, persons with disabilities, and the adult poor within qualifying low-income families, selected via a Proxy Means Test. Since launching nationwide in 2002, it has grown into the country's largest social safety net, currently reaching roughly 350,000 beneficiaries. The programme is funded by the Government of Jamaica with loan support from the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the Inter-American Development Bank.

United States

The Sonoma County Pathway to Income Equity (PIE) is a guaranteed income pilot run by First 5 Sonoma County that gave 305 low-income pregnant individuals and parents of children under six unconditional cash payments of $500/month for 24 months, starting February 22, 2023. Targeted families disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, prioritizing historically under-resourced census tracts. Funded by $5.4M pool of mostly ARPA dollars from Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and the cities of Santa Rosa, Petaluma, and Healdsburg, plus private funding from Corazón Healdsburg. Disbursed via the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI) platform as non-taxable COVID disaster relief. Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) evaluated impact.

United States

The People's Prosperity Pilot was a guaranteed income program run by the City of Saint Paul's Office of Financial Empowerment, providing $500 per month to 150 families for 18 months (October 2020-April 2022). It was offered to families enrolled in CollegeBound Saint Paul who had been financially impacted by COVID-19. Funding came primarily from philanthropic dollars held by the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, supplemented by City CARES Act funds and a Minnesota Department of Human Services grant. It was the first guaranteed income pilot run inside U.S. city government using public funds since the 1980s and the first Mayors for a Guaranteed Income pilot. Results were evaluated by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR) at the University of Pennsylvania.

United States

The Philly Family Trust Study (registered on ClinicalTrials.gov as the Pilot Guaranteed Income Study, Philadelphia) was a University of Pennsylvania pilot randomized controlled trial that gave unconditional cash transfers to low-income, Pennsylvania Medicaid-enrolled adults with type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, and/or hypertension who were patients at Penn Family Care clinics in West Philadelphia. Fifty participants randomized to the intervention arm received eight payments of $125 every two weeks (totaling $1,000 over four months) on a prepaid ClinCard, while fifty control-arm participants received usual care only. The study examined whether short-term unconditional cash improved cardiovascular risk behaviors, financial stress, food/utility security, and objective health measures such as blood pressure and BMI. It was funded and run by Penn's Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) at the Perelman School of Medicine, led by investigators Aaron Richterman, Christina Roberto, and Harsha Thirumurthy. Enrollment ran from spring through fall 2023, and a qualitative companion analysis of participants' experiences was published in 2026.

United States

Philly Joy Bank is a city-run guaranteed income pilot administered by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health that provides $1,000 per month for 18 months (a total of $18,000) to 250 pregnant residents of three high-infant-mortality neighborhoods: Cobbs Creek, Strawberry Mansion, and Nicetown-Tioga. It was developed by the Philadelphia Community Action Network (CAN), a multisector coalition addressing racial disparities in infant mortality, with the Philadelphia City Fund serving as fiscal sponsor and the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI) administering payments. Funding combines private philanthropy (William Penn Foundation, Spring Point Partners, Vanguard, Barra Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia Health Partnership, and Jewish Healthcare Foundation) with City of Philadelphia public funds covering staffing and evaluation. Enrollment of all 250 participants ran from June 2024 through March 2025 via a rolling lottery, and the program is now fully enrolled and closed to new applicants.

United States

PHLHousing+ gives low-income Philadelphia renter families with children direct, unconditional monthly cash payments — loaded onto a prepaid debit card — to close the gap between what a household can afford (30% of income) and its actual rent. It is administered by the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC) in partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority and the University of Pennsylvania's Housing Initiative at Penn, which is evaluating the program as a randomized controlled trial against traditional Housing Choice Vouchers. Funding is a roughly even mix of public dollars (Neighborhood Preservation Initiative bond proceeds, Housing Trust Fund, PA Housing Finance Agency) and philanthropy (William Penn Foundation, Spring Point Partners, Stoneleigh Foundation, Samuel S. Fels Fund). Two-year evaluation results show the cash assistance substantially reduced evictions, forced moves, and homelessness compared to households receiving no assistance.

Iraq

Iraq's Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MOLSA), with technical and financial support from the World Bank Group and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), piloted a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program beginning July 2017 in the Sadr City 2 district of Baghdad. The program pays roughly 6,700 extremely poor households a monthly cash benefit conditioned on children's school enrollment/attendance and use of maternal and child health services, aiming to build human capital and later inform a nationwide CCT scale-up under Iraq's Social Protection Strategic Roadmap. It was designed under MOLSA's Social Protection Law (Law 11/2014) and overseen by an Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee including the Ministries of Education, Health, and Planning.

Germany

Pilotprojekt Grundeinkommen was Germany's first large-scale scientific study of unconditional basic income, jointly run by the nonprofit Mein Grundeinkommen e.V. and DIW Berlin, with Vienna University of Economics and Business, University of Cologne, IAB, and TH Koln as academic partners. From June 2021 to May 2024, 122 randomly selected adults (ages 21-40, single-person households, moderate income) received EUR 1,200/month unconditionally and tax-free, funded entirely by roughly 140,000-150,000 private donors, and were compared against a control group of 1,380 people from the same eligibility pool who received no payments. Final results, published April 2025, found no significant withdrawal from the labor market but significantly improved mental health and subjective well-being among recipients. A separate 2023 financing analysis by Mein Grundeinkommen argued a tax-funded EUR 1,200/month UBI for all German adults could be financed in a way that leaves 80% of adults financially better off.

Spain

A regional Universal Basic Income pilot designed by the Government of Catalonia (Office of the UBI Pilot Plan, with methodology by Ivàlua) to give €800/month to adults and €300/month to minors, unconditionally, for 24 months to about 5,000 people. The design combined a randomized sample of 2,500 people across Catalonia with near-universal enrollment (excluding the top income decile) of roughly 2,500 residents in two selected small municipalities. Despite being fully designed and approved by an advisory council and international scientific committee by 2023, the Catalan Parliament rejected the pilot's budget allocation in March 2023, and it has never been implemented or paid out to any recipient. As of mid-2026 the project remains stalled, administratively downgraded, and its implementation has reportedly been pushed to a future 2028-2031 legislature.

United States

Place to Prosper is a two-year guaranteed income pilot providing $700 a month in unrestricted cash to 75 families in San Francisco's HOPE SF public housing communities (Potrero Hill, Sunnydale, Alice Griffith, and Hunters View) who are full-time caregivers of children age five and under. Led by the Partnership for HOPE SF (housed at the San Francisco Foundation) in collaboration with HOPE SF residents, the pilot pairs direct cash transfers with resident-led research and leadership development. UpTogether administers the cash disbursements, while the Jumuiya Research Institute and the Urban Institute support community-based research evaluating the pilot's impact. The program is funded through private philanthropic support raised by the San Francisco Foundation.

Rwanda

GiveDirectly operates unconditional cash transfer programs in Rwanda in partnership with the Government of Rwanda, delivering large, one-time (lump-sum) mobile-money payments to extremely poor households rather than a recurring monthly basic income. The current flagship active initiative, 'Poverty Eradication – Habwa Wigire,' launched in 2023 and provides a ~$550 one-time transfer per eligible person (household heads, youth, and teen mothers) in the Gasabo, Musanze, Nyanza, Kayonza, and Rusizi districts. GiveDirectly has additionally run donor-specific rounds, such as a 2025-2026 Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD)-backed transfer of ~$1,100 per recipient to 5,331 people in Nyagisozi Sector, Nyanza District. Since 2016, GiveDirectly has delivered over $100 million and reached 220,000+ people across 22 of Rwanda's 30 districts through six distinct programs (poverty relief, refugee self-reliance, youth/nutrition cash benchmarking, and COVID-19 emergency relief). Despite the seed listing's label as a 'Basic Income Program,' no evidence was found of a recurring, long-term monthly guaranteed-income product operating in Rwanda; GiveDirectly's dedicated 'Basic Income' program line (long-term monthly payments) is documented only in Kenya, and formerly Malawi/Mozambique/Uganda, not Rwanda.

United States

P.A.I.D. is a guaranteed income pilot run by NCJW|LA that provides unconditional cash to pregnant Los Angeles County residents to reduce financial stress that can harm birth outcomes. It is one of seven California Department of Social Services (CDSS) Guaranteed Income Pilot Program sites and is structured as a randomized controlled trial (RCT): a treatment group receives $1,000/month and a control group receives $20/month, both for 18 months, distributed via the AidKit platform. The program is funded through a CDSS state grant, with the Urban Institute and UC Berkeley leading the statewide evaluation. It is open to LA County residents regardless of citizenship status, including unhoused individuals who spend the majority of their time in the county.

United States

A standing (not time-limited) cash assistance program for long-term senior tenants in rent-controlled apartments, designed to prevent displacement rather than test a hypothesis. What sets it apart from typical guaranteed income pilots: instead of a flat monthly payment, POD tops up each household to a guaranteed after-rent income floor, funded by a dedicated local sales tax (Measure GSH) rather than ARPA or philanthropy, with no research/evaluation requirement and no fixed end date — participants stay enrolled indefinitely as long as they remain eligible.

United States

Preserving Our Diversity (POD) provides monthly cash assistance, via debit card, to low-income, long-term senior renters (65+) in rent-controlled apartments in Santa Monica, California. Administered by the City's Housing Authority, it helps eligible seniors reach a minimum monthly after-rent income standard, currently $986 (one-person) and $1,724 (two-person). Began as a pilot in November 2017 with 22 participants, expanded in 2019 with a $2 million City Council investment intended to serve roughly 248-436 seniors. Funded entirely by the City of Santa Monica; applications accepted on a rolling basis with lottery-based waitlist enrollment.

Indonesia

Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH) is Indonesia's flagship national conditional cash transfer program, run by the Ministry of Social Affairs since 2007, that supports poor and near-poor households (Keluarga Penerima Manfaat, or KPM) identified through the government's integrated social-welfare database (DTKS/DTSEN). Eligible households receive cash tied to having a pregnant/breastfeeding woman, a child aged 0-6, a student in primary through secondary school, a senior aged 60+, or a person with a severe disability, conditional on using health, nutrition, and education services. It is funded entirely by the Indonesian state budget (APBN) and currently reaches roughly 9-10 million families nationwide, disbursed in cash tranches onto a Kartu Keluarga Sejahtera (KKS) bank card issued by state banks (Bank Himbara). PKH is supported by a nationwide network of social-worker facilitators (pendamping PKH) and is often bundled with Indonesia's non-cash food assistance (BPNT/Kartu Sembako) and subsidized health insurance (PBI-JK). Families are subject to periodic re-verification and a graduation policy that caps most components' participation at roughly five years, with elderly and severe-disability cases exempt from the cap.

Mexico

A national conditional cash transfer program launched in 1997 as Progresa, renamed Oportunidades in 2002, and renamed again to Prospera in 2014, providing bimonthly cash transfers to low-income households in exchange for school attendance and regular health check-ups. It was the world's first large-scale national CCT program and became a global model for conditional cash transfer design, eventually reaching over 6 million households (roughly a quarter of Mexico's population). The program was discontinued by the López Obrador administration in 2019, with its education-scholarship function absorbed into the unconditional Becas para el Bienestar Benito Juárez program and its health component folded into IMSS-Bienestar.

Dominican Republic

ProSoli was the Dominican Republic's national conditional cash transfer program, created by the government in 2012 to unify economic transfers with human-capital and social-inclusion services for poor and extremely poor families. It is fully funded and run by the national government (via the Vice Presidency's Social Policy Cabinet), delivering cash and subsidies through a magnetic/chip card conditioned on children's school attendance and health check-ups, plus socio-educational accompaniment. In June 2021 the program was formally rebranded and expanded as "Supérate," which now channels most of the Dominican government's social subsidies (food, gas, electricity, education, housing, women's protection) to well over one million households nationwide.