In 2022, Shamarra Woods, now 31, was about to leave Atlanta, frustrated by her high rent and low pay as a logistics team trainee at a cardboard box company, a job it had taken her a year to find.
A single mother (her daughter Memri was born in March of that year), she couldn’t see her way to making ends meet.
Then in late May she received a phone call with some welcome news: Someone from the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund, an Atlanta nonprofit, told her she had been chosen by lottery to participate in “In Her Hands” — a pilot program giving an average of $850 per month for two years to 654 women, no strings attached. The GRO Fund runs the program in partnership with Give Directly, a New York-based nonprofit.
The extra money allowed Woods to pay off debt and to afford child care, which in turn enabled her to keep a job at a company that eventually promoted her.
The Georgia program is one of 155 nationwide launched in the last few years to test the notion of unconditionally giving cash to fight poverty — called guaranteed or basic income. The idea has caught fire, with a growing number of pilot programs producing more and more data pointing to its effectiveness.
Now a group of academics has completed a report on the first year of the two-year program. “In Her Hands” has had some initial success in paving a road out of poverty. The new data, when added to the results from dozens of other studies, has supporters of guaranteed income hopeful that policymakers will see the benefits of dedicating public funds to the idea, at the federal, state or local level. One obstacle addressed by research findings, they note, is the longstanding narrative with roots in the Reagan-era “welfare queen” trope about poor people being “undeserving” of no-strings assistance.
An advance copy of the report’s findings shows 45% of participants used at least some of the money to “catch up/get ahead” on paying bills; 27% paid off debts; 16% bought “more or better food”; and 14% improved their credit scores. Nearly 30% reported having “rainy day” funds, or twice the percentage from a comparison group.
“I love hearing from people affected [by guaranteed income]. Wherever they were at, they’ve been able to improve their lives.”~ Naomi Zewde, health policy and management professor, UCLA
Hope Wollensack, executive director at GRO, said that about three-fourths of the women in the program have children — like Woods — and “tend to report spending a good deal [of their monthly payments] on their children’s needs.”
Woods came to Atlanta from rural Mississippi in 2020. She was the first in her immediate family to finish college and saw her move as “the start of a pathway to living a successful life.”
She lives in the Old Fourth Ward — the historic neighborhood where Martin Luther King Jr. was born, and one of the communities targeted by “In Her Hands.” Three majority-Black areas are served by the program: the Old Fourth Ward, a cluster of rural counties in southwest Georgia and the Atlanta suburb of College Park.
Program participants are women earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level – $40,880 for a family of two.
Woods’ daughter Memri was only 2 months old when Woods applied to the program. Her rent, with utilities, was about $1,700. She had a car note of $650. It was becoming too much to afford.
She could care for her daughter at home because she was working remotely. But months later, her employer called staff back to work on-site three days a week. She described those events as “one step forward, one step back.”
But the extra income from the GRO Fund allowed her to pay for child care, which allowed her to keep the job; she later got promoted and now earns $55,000 a year.
Naomi Zewde, health policy and management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, was one of nine authors of the report on the first year of the “In Her Hands” pilot program. She called attention to effects that can be measured: Program participants, for example, are 60% more likely than those in a comparison group to enroll in higher education programs — as well as to other impacts that can’t be measured.
“I love hearing from people affected [by guaranteed income],” she said. “Wherever they were at, they’ve been able to improve their lives.”
Sean Kline, director of the Stanford University Basic Income Lab, said the growing number of guaranteed income pilot programs nationwide is also creating a growing number of reports like the one regarding “In Her Hands” — with more to come.
“Over the next 20 months, there will be a tremendous amount of data,” Kline said in February, with close to 40 programs expected to produce results in the next few years.
One effect of this, he said, is “normalizing [guaranteed income] as a policy idea.” The ongoing positive results are “challenging established ideas, showing that poverty is a systemic rather than an individual failure. They’re challenging harmful narratives about poor people, which are often racialized and gender-based.”
These narratives include “the perception that ‘those folks are looking for a handout,’” Wollensack said. “These are deeply embedded myths.”
Stephen Roll, a professor of social policy at Washington University in St. Louis, also helped evaluate the first year of “In Her Hands.” One trend he sees in the proliferating number of guaranteed income pilot programs is a focus on specific populations, such as homeless people, low-income parents and — as with the Atlanta program — Black women.
“The vast majority of people [receiving guaranteed income] don’t leave their jobs, and they use the money either to pursue their goals or to supply staples on the table.”~ Stephen Roll, social policy professor, Washington University in St. Louis
Roll hopes to see more programs make a stronger connection “between providing income and actually building wealth. Building wealth requires financial stability and savings.” A way to reach this goal may be to offer financial education, including on investing, he said.
Moving forward, Roll added, funding for guaranteed income programs needs to shift from private philanthropy — and, with some of the pilots to date, COVID-related federal funds that are now unavailable — and toward sustained public support. Like others researching guaranteed income, Roll mentioned the powerful impact of the federal Child Tax Credits given with no strings attached during the pandemic. “Evidence produced by CTC and [guaranteed income] pilots will encourage city, state and maybe federal government agencies to build programs into their budgets,” he said.
As with others researching guaranteed income, Roll said findings continue to refute the belief that giving money to people in poverty will “allow people to not work, and stay home.” He said the studies show “the vast majority of people [receiving guaranteed income] don’t leave their jobs, and they use the money either to pursue their goals or to supply staples on the table.”
Shamarra Woods, meanwhile, said she is “very nervous” about “In Her Hands” ending. What is she going to do? Even with her pay raise, Woods struggles to keep up with the high cost of living in Atlanta — including $1,240 a month for child care, and rent that has increased by $200 in the last two years.
She’s hoping for another promotion, but also interviews for new jobs on her lunch breaks. Woods credits “In Her Hands” with allowing her to hold on to her dreams, which include starting a business in which she can put her marketing degree to use. The program has let her “see how it is, living in the city … [and] seeing what kind of income you need to make a life. That’s the takeaway.”
