Madison’s guaranteed income pilot has initial findings, now halfway through

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - Last year, researchers partnered with the City of Madison to find out what would happen if select families got monthly payments of $500. Now, that pilot is halfway through.

The Madison Forward Fund has paid 155 randomly chosen, low-income families since September 2022. The dollars are unconditional with no strings attached.

The program released an interim report in January and showed, as pictured in the chart below, how basic income payments were spent. Between September and November, participants spent most of their money on retail goods and services. Food and groceries, as well as transportation, closely followed.

“One person told me that they are saving the money because they want to buy a car,” Blake Roberts Crall, program manager, said. “Another mom talked about, how at the beginning of the school year, she was able to go and get everything on her kid’s school supply list without worrying about it.”

She added, “It changes the narrative a little bit about some assumptions we have, [like] what it means to be poor in America, and the fact that we often think as a society that poor people are poor because they’ve made bad decisions or can’t manage their money as well as other people.”

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway said researchers are preparing for a second survey to look at how the payments impact lives. “Does it help with housing security, for example? Does it reduce justice involvement? Those are the research questions that I’d be very interested to see the data on,” she said.

The experimental program runs through partnerships among the mayor’s office and a number of other groups, including the nationwide network Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and UW-Madison.

“I think that this will not be just a one-year program. But I don’t know exactly what shape it will take going forward,” the mayor said.

The last deposit is set for August, according to Roberts Crall.

Rhodes-Conway admitted, it’s unlikely the city budget will include funds for the program’s future. “We just don’t have those kinds of resources,” she said. “But the federal government could and should.”

As the mayor is up for re-election in just three weeks, her opponent, Mayoral Candidate Gloria Reyes, told NBC15 she would also join Mayors for a Guaranteed Income as part of her effort to tackle wealth inequality.

“That’s what should be included as part of this guaranteed income plan is that, yes, let’s help support families when they need it most but also uplifting them so they’re not staying in the program forever,” Reyes said.

To continue the basic income program, Reyes added she would want to look at whether there are more private funds to support it.

The $930,000 pilot has been running on non-taxpayer dollars, through private donors. In October, the city announced the program got about approximately 3,000 applications from eligible families.

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