JFI’s guaranteed income analysis in the New York Times
A September 10 article in the New York Times by Kurtis Lee covers the rise of pilot programs and how they might contribute to more widespread policy change.
The article, “Guaranteed Income Programs Spread, City by City,” features JFI’s political economy research and an interview with lead researcher on guaranteed income Steve Nuñez.
An analysis from the Jain Family Institute, a nonprofit that has studied several pilot programs, argues that the best pathway toward a national guaranteed income isn’t through scaling up a pilot, but in reforming and expanding existing federal programs, like the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit.
“It does not make sense to take a municipal program and build it when there are already programs in place that can be reformed,” said Stephen Nuñez, lead researcher on guaranteed income at the Jain Family Institute.
For example, Dr. Nuñez said, California — along with nearly a dozen other states — already has a form of child tax credit. In California, parents with annual income of less than $30,000 qualify.
Read Halah Ahmad and Steve Nuñez’s recent paper, “The Political Economy of Guaranteed Income: Where do we go from here?”