A Review of Legal and Policy Evidence on Guaranteed Income Programs as Poverty Alleviation Tools in The United States
Abstract
Guaranteed income programs, which provide regular, unconditional cash payments to defined populations, have expanded from a fringe policy idea to one of the most widely piloted antipoverty interventions in the United States. Since 2018, more than one hundred and sixty demonstrations have operated across at least eighteen states and the District of Columbia, generating an unusually rich body of experimental evidence alongside an equally distinctive body of legal conflict. This review synthesizes two literatures that are rarely examined together: the empirical evaluation record on guaranteed income as a poverty alleviation tool and the legal and policy framework that governs whether, where, and how such programs may lawfully operate. The empirical record shows consistent improvements in income stability, food security, housing stability, and psychological wellbeing, with modest and heterogeneous effects on employment and mixed findings on longer term health outcomes. The legal record shows a rapidly hardening set of constraints, including state constitutional public purpose and gift clause challenges, a wave of state preemption statutes prohibiting local programs, unresolved federal tax treatment, and benefit interaction rules that can penalize participants in means tested programs. The review concludes that the durability of guaranteed income as a poverty alleviation tool now depends less on the strength of its outcome evidence than on the resolution of contested questions of state constitutional law, local government authority, and federal program coordination. Implications for program design, legislative drafting, and future research are discussed.
Keywords
guaranteed incomeunconditional cash transferspoverty alleviationstate preemptionpublic purpose doctrinesocial welfare policy
References
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