The basic income experiment 2017–2018 in Finland : Preliminary results

Abstract

Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's Government set customer orientation of services as one of the strategic objectives of the Governmental Programme. To achieve this goal, Sipilä’s government decided to launch a basic income experiment during its term. By experimenting with basic income, Sipilä’s government tried to find out whether the introduction of a basic income could make the social security system in Finland more inclusive and further increase the labour supply.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and Kela - The Social Insurance Institution of Finland have agreed on the assessment of the basic income experiment. The assessment of the basic income experiment is carried out by Kela, together with the VATT Institute for Economic Research, the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki, the La-bour Institute for Economic Research, the Finnish Association for Mental Health and Tänk. The scientific director of the research project is Programme Director (SRC) Olli Kangas, from the University of Turku, and the administrative director is Research Professor Jaana Martikainen, from Kela.

The Basic Income Experiment Evaluation Project studies the effects of basic income, utilizing both registry, survey and interview data. The research results of the subprojects will be reported in stages during the evaluation research project running from 2019 to 2020.

This report is the first research publication presenting the effects of the basic income experiment in Finland. It includes a preliminary register-based statistical analysis of the employment effects of the experiment for 2017. An analysis based on survey data examines the impact of the experiment on the wellbeing of the basic income recipients