UBI Programs

Malaysia

Bantuan Prihatin Rakyat (BPR) was the Malaysian federal government's national cash transfer program for low- and middle-income (B40/M40) households, single adults, and senior citizens, administered by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (LHDN) on behalf of the Ministry of Finance. It succeeded the earlier Bantuan Sara Hidup (BSH, 2019-2020) and Bantuan Prihatin Nasional (BPN, 2020) cash-aid schemes and ran as an annual, means-tested cash handout funded entirely from the federal budget. Payments were tiered by household income and number of children, with extra top-ups ("BPR Tambahan") added under the 2021 PEMULIH COVID-19 recovery package. BPR itself was discontinued after 2021, with its role taken over by Bantuan Keluarga Malaysia (BKM, 2022) and then Sumbangan Tunai Rahmah (STR, 2023-present).

United States

Basic Cash Assistance for Households was a City and County of Denver program, funded with $3 million in federal ARPA COVID-19 recovery dollars, that provided one-time cash payments to Denver families who were ineligible for federal public benefits, including many immigrant and refugee households. Denver's Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (within the Agency for Human Rights and Community Partnerships) contracted Impact Charitable to administer the program, which in turn partnered with AidKit and a network of community-based organizations for outreach and enrollment. Eligible households received $1,000 to $1,500 as a one-time payment via prepaid debit card or direct deposit. Applications opened September 12, 2023 and the program was expected to serve 1,800 to 2,200 households.

United States

Income Movement is a 501(c)(3) national grassroots coalition-building organization advocating for basic income policy in the U.S. The Basic Income Advocacy Pilot is one of its programs supporting former guaranteed-income pilot participants as they organize into lived-experience advocates. It runs as ongoing 6-month cohorts and includes small cash payments alongside optional advocacy skill-building. The program is funded through private/philanthropic support and distributed via Usio prepaid debit cards. Independent public documentation of this specific pilot's operational details is limited; most details rely on the seed data and Income Movement's broader published advocacy work.

Finland

The Basic Income Experiment was a two-year, nationwide pilot run by Kela, Finland's Social Insurance Institution, that paid an unconditional monthly income to a randomly selected sample of unemployed Finns. From January 2017 through December 2018, 2,000 participants aged 25-58 who had received a Kela unemployment benefit in November 2016 were paid a tax-exempt 560 euros per month regardless of other income or job-seeking activity. It was the world's first basic income trial that was nationwide, statutory, and based on a randomized, mandatory field experiment rather than voluntary sign-up. The program was authorized by the Finnish Government and administered through Kela, with research support from the VATT Institute for Economic Research and the University of Helsinki. A 2020 evaluation found small employment effects but improved perceived wellbeing, financial security, and mental health among recipients.

United Kingdom (Wales only)

A time-limited basic income pilot run by the Welsh Government that gave care leavers a guaranteed monthly income of £1,600 (gross) for up to two years after their 18th birthday. The pilot enrolled young people who turned 18 between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023, with 644 individuals (97% of the eligible cohort) taking part. Payments were unconditional on employment or education status but replaced entitlement to most other means-tested benefits. Delivery of payments concluded by 30 June 2025 (a handful of late-joining recipients finished shortly after), though the independent evaluation led by Cardiff University's CASCADE research centre continues through 2027.

Ireland

Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) is an Irish government scheme that pays 2,000 randomly selected professional artists and creative arts workers an unconditional €325 a week (paid monthly), with no means test or work requirement. It began as a 3-year pilot (2022-2025, extended to Feb 2026) and, following strongly positive evaluation results, was made a recurring/permanent feature of the state's arts funding in Budget 2026, relaunching as a new 2026-2029 cohort. It is funded entirely by the Irish Exchequer via the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport and is bundled with a mandatory research programme tracking recipients' wellbeing and creative output.

Peru

Cool Earth's Basic Income Pilot is billed as the world's first basic income program for Indigenous peoples living in the Amazon rainforest. Launched in November 2023 in co-design with the Indigenous women-led organizations ONAMIAP and OMIAASEC, it provided unconditional monthly cash transfers of 258 Peruvian soles (about $69 USD) to adults across three Ashaninka and Yanesha communities in Peru's Junin region. The two-year pilot, delivered via the AidKit digital cash-transfer platform, aimed to reduce communities' reliance on illegal logging and land-renting to meet urgent needs for food, health, and education. Internal assessments reported improved food security and reduced pressure toward unsustainable forest activities, and an independent evaluation by the University of Bath was expected to publish full results in early-to-mid 2026.

United States

Bay Area Thriving Families (publicly branded as "It All Adds Up") is a randomized controlled trial testing whether unconditional cash payments help families who have experienced homelessness in San Francisco achieve long-term housing stability after exiting rapid rehousing. The study is led by the Housing Solutions Lab at the NYU Furman Center in partnership with implementing nonprofits Compass Family Services and Hamilton Families. Enrolled families are randomly assigned to receive either $1,000 or $50 per month for 12 months as they transition off their rapid rehousing subsidy. It is funded by Google.org, J-PAL North America, HUD, and other private and public sources, with NYU evaluating effects on housing stability, income, employment, and well-being.

Pakistan

BISP is the Government of Pakistan's national unconditional cash transfer programme, launched in 2008 to reduce poverty and cushion poor households from economic shocks. Its core component, Benazir Kafaalat, pays a quarterly stipend directly to the female head of eligible low-income households nationwide, with eligibility determined by a poverty (proxy means test) score from the National Socio-Economic Registry. As of 2026 it reaches roughly 9.3 million families and is funded primarily through the federal budget of Pakistan, historically supplemented by international donors including the UK (DFID/FCDO) and World Bank.

United States

BIG:LEAP was a City of Los Angeles guaranteed income pilot that gave 3,200 low-income Angelenos with a dependent child (or who were pregnant) $1,000 a month, no strings attached, for 12 months between January 2022 and March 2023. It targeted residents living below the federal poverty level who had experienced COVID-19-related economic or medical hardship. The program was run by the Community Investment for Families Department and funded by the city's general fund plus council-district and philanthropic investments (including the Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles). It was also a randomized controlled trial, studied by the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR) with UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health, comparing outcomes against a ~4,992-person control group.

United States

The BIRTH Fund (Building Independent Resilient Thriving Homes) is an unconditional cash-transfer program launched by the City of Indianapolis's Office of Equity, Belonging and Inclusion, in partnership with the national nonprofit The Bridge Project, to support pregnant residents in the city's highest-infant-mortality ZIP codes. It is funded by the Indianapolis Foundation and private donors, and delivered using the Bridge Project's standardized national cash-transfer model. The program provides an initial lump-sum payment followed by tapering monthly payments over three years. Indianapolis is one of roughly 14 states/cities where The Bridge Project, originally piloted in NYC in 2021, now operates.

United States

BEEM (Black Economic Equity Movement) is a guaranteed income research pilot that provided $500 per month for 12 months to 300 Black young adults, ages 18-24, living in specific under-resourced areas of San Francisco and Oakland, California. The program pairs no-strings-attached cash with optional financial coaching and peer support to address the effects of structural racism, poverty, and stress on Black emerging adults' financial, mental, and physical health. It was designed and led by the nonprofit MyPath in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Oregon Health & Science University, and UC Berkeley as a randomized controlled crossover trial. The project was funded primarily through a five-year, roughly $9 million cooperative agreement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose funding was briefly suspended in 2025 amid federal DEI-related grant terminations before being reinstated after litigation. Enrollment ran from late 2022 through mid-2023, and payments to the full cohort concluded around 2025.

United States

The Village Building Program (also called the Village Building Cohort Model) is a three-year guaranteed basic income initiative run by Brown Hope through its Black Resilience Fund, providing 25 Black households in Multnomah County, Oregon with unconditional monthly cash payments. Disbursements began in late 2022/January 2023 and were scheduled to run through December 2025. Payments scale with household size, from $1,000 to $2,000 a month depending on the number of children. The program is funded through private donations and philanthropic support, including a matching campaign from the Oregon Community Foundation.

United States

The Black Women's Resilience Project (BWRP) is a Black-woman-led guaranteed income initiative developed by Café X: By Any Beans Necessary in partnership with Jewish Family Service of San Diego, Motherful, and other regional funders to test how direct cash paired with culturally relevant support services affects the economic mobility and well-being of Black women caregivers in San Diego County. Since 2020 the project has proposed several cohort designs, including an original plan for 35 women receiving $1,000/month for 18 months and a later plan for cohorts of 25-60 women receiving roughly $1,000/month over three years, though as of mid-2026 the broader caregiver cash cohort remains in active fundraising with no confirmed disbursement date. The one guaranteed income track that is currently operational under the BWRP/resilience-projects.com website is the Born Well Guaranteed Income Program, which provides $750/month for 12 months to pregnant participants of the county's Black Infant Health Program. Born Well is funded through a public-private partnership among the County of San Diego, San Diego Foundation ($1 million commitment), Alliance Healthcare Foundation, and Jewish Family Service. Payments are loaded onto a debit card and recipients face no restrictions on how funds are spent.

Brazil

Bolsa Família is Brazil's national conditional cash transfer program, run by the federal Ministry of Social Development, which pays monthly benefits to low-income families whose per-capita household income is at or below R$218/month. As of February 2026 the program reached about 18.84 million families nationwide, with an average monthly benefit of roughly R$690. It is funded entirely by the Brazilian federal government. Families must register in the Cadastro Único national social registry and meet health (vaccination, prenatal care) and education (school attendance) conditionalities to keep receiving benefits. First launched in 2004 by unifying several earlier cash-transfer programs, it was rebranded Auxílio Brasil from late 2021 to March 2023 before reverting to the Bolsa Família name with an expanded benefit structure.

Ecuador

Ecuador's Bono de Desarrollo Humano (BDH) is a government-funded conditional cash transfer that provides monthly payments to households living in poverty and extreme poverty, prioritizing families with children, older adults, and people with disabilities. Recipients are identified automatically through Ecuador's national Social Registry (Registro Social) rather than through an application, and typically receive USD 55 per month, rising to as much as USD 150 for households with more children under the Bono Variable component. Running continuously since 2003 (as successor to the earlier Bono Solidario) under the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES), now reorganized as the Ministry of Human Development, the program is funded entirely by Ecuador's national government (with earlier co-financing from the IDB and World Bank). It is one of Latin America's longest-running and most extensively studied cash transfer programs.

Bolivia

Bono Juancito Pinto is Bolivia's national school-attendance cash transfer, paying an annual Bs 200 (about US$29) grant to students in public (fiscal) and agreement-based (convenio) primary, secondary, and special-education schools to encourage enrollment, attendance, and completion, and reduce dropout. It was created by presidential decree in October 2006 under President Evo Morales and is funded by revenue from the nationalization of Bolivia's hydrocarbons industry (the Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons, IDH). The Ministry of Education administers the program and pays out the grant once a year in cash through Banco Unión and partner financial entities, with mobile brigades reaching remote rural communities. As of 2025 it reaches more than 2.3 million students nationwide, making it one of the largest conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America relative to national population.

Honduras

Bono Vida Mejor ("Better Life Bond") was Honduras' national conditional cash transfer program, run by the government's Secretaría de Desarrollo e Inclusión Social (SEDIS) as the successor to the long-running Programa de Asignación Familiar (PRAF, 1990-2009) and its 2010 rebrand as "Bono 10,000." It delivered quarterly nutrition, health, education, and basic-support grants to extremely poor rural and urban Honduran households with children under 18 and/or pregnant and breastfeeding women, contingent on school attendance and health check-ups. At its peak the program reached roughly 350,000 households (an estimated two million Hondurans), with average transfers of about $340 per household per year. It was funded by the Government of Honduras together with loans and grants from the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Central American Bank for Economic Integration. After Honduras' 2022 change in government, SEDIS was dissolved into the new Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL), which replaced Bono Vida Mejor with a rebranded cash-transfer program called "Red Solidaria."

Belize

BOOST is Belize's flagship conditional cash transfer program, run by the Ministry of Human Development, Family Support and Gender Affairs, that gives poor households a small monthly stipend for eligible members (school-age children, children under 5, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities). Payments are conditioned on children maintaining 85% school attendance and completing routine health/immunization checkups. The program is entirely government-funded through Belize's national budget, with technical and financial support over the years from the World Bank, UNICEF, and the EU's ECHO. In 2026 the government raised BOOST's annual budget from BZ$3 million to BZ$5 million to reach more vulnerable households.

United States

BOOST is a guaranteed basic income pilot run by the Foundation for the Los Angeles Community Colleges (the philanthropic partner of LACCD) that gave 251 students at four LACCD colleges $1,000 a month, unconditionally, for 12 months to help them stay in and complete health-career coursework. It was funded by more than $4 million in private philanthropy, chiefly the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Foundation's Young Adults Forward Fund (with the California Community Foundation), plus the ECMC Foundation and Weingart Foundation. Payments ran November 2024 through October 2025 via debit cards, alongside a randomized controlled trial led by the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Guaranteed Income Research. It is described as the largest GBI program for community college students in the U.S. to date and the first to include an RCT at this scale. The pilot has concluded and the Foundation is now seeking funding for a second cohort ('BOOST 2.0').

United States

Seed data describes "Bootstraps" as a documentary/media project by Pale Blue Dot Media that gave unconditional direct cash to 23 individuals/households across 11 states from late 2017 to late 2020, distributed via Netroots Foundation (likely fiscal sponsor) and Amalgamated Bank. This description could not be independently verified through available research tools in this session.

United States

Born Well is a $1 million public-private initiative led by San Diego Foundation (SDF) with San Diego County to reduce disparities in maternal and infant health. Within Born Well, SDF partnered with the County's Perinatal Equity Initiative and Infant Health Program to pilot a guaranteed income track (the 'Born Well Guaranteed Income Program') providing $750/month for 12 months to 25 pregnant participants in the County's Black Infant Health Program. The pilot is funded by SDF and Alliance Healthcare Foundation and operated through a coalition including the County's Maternal Child and Family Health Services Branch, Neighborhood House Association, Jewish Family Service of San Diego, and the community-based Black Women's Resilience Project (a project of By Any Beans Necessary, with partner Motherful). Applications for the 25-slot cohort opened February 15, 2026, with a random selection ('Opportunity Drawing') around February 24, 2026.

United States

Breathe is Los Angeles County's guaranteed income pilot, administered by the County CEO's Poverty Alleviation Initiative, that gave 1,000 randomly selected low-income adult residents $1,000 per month for three years, plus a second cohort of 200 former DCFS foster youth $1,000 per month for two years. It was funded by County (ARPA-era) public funds alongside several philanthropic foundations, and paired with a University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research randomized controlled study. The program administrator, Strength-Based Community Change (SBCC), handled enrollment and disbursed funds via prepaid debit cards. The pilot concluded in 2025, with full research findings expected in 2027.

United States

The Bridge Project is a New York-based nonprofit (EIN 88-1293144) that provides unrestricted cash to pregnant individuals; in January 2025 it expanded to Appalachia, offering payments to residents of ARC-designated counties in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and Tennessee. The Appalachia chapter is funded primarily by the Monarch Foundation as part of a $10 million, multi-year investment. Up to 1,250 participants are randomly assigned to a 'high-cash' or 'low-cash' group, both of which take part in an 18-month research study on the impacts of direct cash assistance. The program follows the Bridge Project's standardized national payment structure of a prenatal stipend followed by tapering monthly payments through a child's third birthday.

United States

The Bridge Project is a national nonprofit providing unconditional cash assistance to low-income pregnant individuals and new mothers to reduce childhood poverty during a child's first 1,000 days. In February 2026 it expanded to Multnomah County, Oregon, its newest chapter after launches in eleven other states covering over 3,800 families. The Multnomah County cohort of 100 participants is funded by a private foundation, with the Monarch Foundation covering administrative costs as a funding partner rather than program manager. Payments are distributed via GiveCard onto direct deposit, prepaid, and reloadable debit card options. The program runs for three years per participant, beginning with monthly payments in March 2026.