Fighting Poverty with Guaranteed Income

A KQED Forum program late last year was on a guaranteed income program starting in Concord. Forum said they will provide 120 families with $500 a month for a year. More than 20 similar pilot programs have sprung up in the Bay Area in the last few years. That has made California a hotbed for guaranteed income experiments. Advocates say that “no-strings attached” funding puts participants on a path to financial security because they often use the money to cover basic necessities, pay off debt, and build up savings.
Amy Castro was one of the panelists and she has studied these programs across the country. She is a University of Pennsylvania Associate Professor of the School of Social Policy & Practice. She is also co-founder and faculty director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research. 
Her work explores economic mobility, guaranteed income, innovation, and disparities in housing and lending. She served as the Co-Principal Investigator of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration under former Mayor Michael Tubbs which led to a proliferation of experimentation with unconditional cash across the U.S. Dr. Castro is the Co-Principal Investigator of 30 applied cash-transfer studies and she currently advises more than 20 Mayoral teams, state, and county legislators on unconditional cash research.
Dr. Castro’s research is featured often in the popular press including the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Nation, the Economist, the LA Times, CNN, NBC, PBS, and National Public Radio.