Financial Stability

In February 2019, about midway into his term as the youngest (he was elected at the age of 26) and the first African American mayor of Stockton, California, Michael Tubbs launched a two-year guaranteed income pilot program that provided $500 per month to 125 city residents living below the city’s median annual income of $46,000. Tubbs failed to win a second term in 2020, but his Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration appears to be a success: A recent report from a group of independent researchers concluded that the program’s first year had a positive impact, boosting full-time employment by 12% while reducing anxiety and depression among recipients.

Last year, Tubbs founded a group called Mayors for Guaranteed Income, comprising 44 fellow mayors who support some version of guaranteed income. They’re all Democrats. “I am working feverishly on getting a couple Republican mayors,” says Tubbs, now a special adviser on economic opportunity to California governor Gavin Newsom. Mayors across the country are starting to launch their own pilots, and the movement is gaining national momentum: Presidential and now New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang has been a prominent champion of the concept, and federal stimulus checks distributed during the pandemic also broadened the discussion around guaranteed income, which is, Tubbs says, “an idea as old as the country itself.”