According to the Finnish Social Security Institution (Kela), an evaluation study about the basic income experiment will provide information regarding the impacts of basic income on employment, income level and well being of the persons who participated in the experiment. The first results of this experiment will be published next Friday, 8th February 2019.
The evaluation study includes a register-based study and a phone survey among members of the experimental group and the control group. It will also examine attitudes and public debate regarding the possibility of establishing a basic income.
The results will be published in stages in 2019 and 2020, said Kela. A more extensive study report on the first year of the experiment will be completed in spring 2019. The results of the whole experiment will be completed in spring 2020.
2,000 unemployed randomly selected
Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's Government implemented a basic income experiment in Finland in 2017 and 2018. During the experiment, 2,000 randomly selected unemployed persons received a basic income of 560 euros per month regardless of their other income and, for example, whether they actively tried to find a job or not.
The participants were selected among persons between 25 and 58 years of age who had in 2016 received basic unemployment allowance or labour market support from Kela.
Exceptional social experiment
The basic income experiment is an exceptional social experiment both in Finland and worldwide. The evaluation study on the experiment will provide scientific data to support a reform of the Finnish social security, and more broadly to provide information for the ongoing social policy debate.
Experiences of the experiment and its evaluation will lay down a good foundation for the preparation of other social experiments.
