From Work Incentives to Public Health: The Evolving Reception of Canada’s MINCOME Experiment

Author: Ronald VerdeRose

Field of Study: Undeclared

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 79

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: The Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment (MINCOME), which ran from 1974 to 1979, is one of the best known experiments to test a Negative Income Tax (NIT), which provides low-income households with unconditional payments that gradually phase out at a break-even point. Interestingly, scholarly focus on MINCOME has evolved over time: while early studies were geared toward measuring the effect of cash on labor participation, work spearheaded by Evelyn Forget since the 2010s has highlighted the impact of MINCOME’s poverty reduction on healthcare and other sociological metrics. This paper explores why the debate on MINCOME has developed over time and how the shifting conversation on the experiment has impacted our understanding of universal basic income (an idea closely related to NIT). The study first reviews the history of MINCOME’s two sites, Winnipeg and Dauphin, and explores how differences in testing design (randomized control trial vs. saturation site) led to the more immediate findings from Winnipeg overshadowing the longer-term outcomes from Dauphin.