Examining Effects of Guaranteed Income for Low-Income Families (2025-2026)

Background

Guaranteed Income (GI) programs provide regular cash payments to individuals or families, aiming to ensure a basic standard of living. Support for GI programs in the United States has been increasing, reflecting growing recognition of GI’s potential to alleviate poverty and promote health and well being.

GI programs may have specific advantages relative to other assistance options; for instance, they do not face the same stigma as food assistance programs such as SNAP and WID, and the versatility of GI programs may make them more appealing. GI programs also have the potential to address a confluence of health and social needs in tandem.

Durham County will be initiating a GI pilot program starting in late 2024. This program will randomize 250 low-income families with children (an estimated 1000 individuals in total) into two groups: one that receives $750 per month of GI funds, and one that does not. This opens a critical opportunity to advance research on GI, including exploring the impact of the program for individual and community health and economic opportunity.

Project Description

This project aims to advance understanding of the impact of Guaranteed Income programs on factors critical to individual and community well being, with a specific focus on the pilot program being implemented in Durham County. Team members will used a community-participatory, mixed methods approach geared towards numerous health, economic and educational factors using participant surveys, interviews, electronic health records (EHR), and child educational data.

This will include five key tasks:

1. Literature summaries: Team members will explore the quickly growing body of research, applied and traditional academic, addressing guaranteed and basic income programs.
2. Survey data management and analysis: Team members will work with the GI program survey data to conduct preliminary analyses of survey data. This will include data management processes, examination of baseline data for the treatment and control group, and examination of differences emerging for the treatment and control group after six months of participation.
3. Interview data collection and analysis: The team will conduct interviews with participants in the GI program to develop a clearer understanding of the experience of participating in the program, for an explanatory lens on survey results, and to identify any unanticipated outcomes or effects.
4. Electronic Health Record (EHR) data infrastructure and analysis: Team members will develop initial data infrastructure and conduct preliminary analyses of electronic health records data.
5. Data Walk and Community Interpretation: Using visualization of initial results as a basis, the team will develop and implement two data walks to be used in two planned Community Convenings, where participants/attendees would share how their experience does, and doesn’t, resonate with what these data show. This speaks to a lived- experience lens on these issues as a critical complement to other results.

Ultimately, this work will help Durham County understand the effects of its current GI pilot program and future related policy initiatives, as well as broader research on and implementation of GI programs.

Anticipated Outputs

Literature syntheses on Guaranteed Income and its effects; datasets from quantitative data and statistical analysis plan; results summaries; collection and preliminary analysis of qualitative data (interviews with GI fund recipients); data visualizations; data walk for community interpretation of results

Student Opportunities

Ideally, this project team will include 6 graduate students and 6 undergraduate students interested in policy initiatives to address inequity. Students with backgrounds in social science, public policy and health-related disciplines are encouraged to apply, but this project is open to students from all backgrounds. A graduate student will be selected to serve as project manager.

Students will be engaged in exploration and synthesis of existing literature, including synthesis for a public/non-academic audience; development of data collection processes; implementation of data collection processes; quantitative and qualitative analysis; and informing publicly facing dissemination. In addition, students will gain critical skills in collaborative processes and teamwork, including working in a responsive research/practice partnership. Students will also have opportunities to work with external partners, such as Durham County and the Family Economic Policy Lab.

Team meeting sessions will include foundational framing on community-partnered and participatory research and evaluation, teaching and learning on research methods related to the project and active engagement in research processes (e.g., coding design and implementation, results dissemination, etc.). Students will have required assignments to facilitate meeting deadlines. The graduate student project manager will help to track progress toward planned milestones, provide operational facilitation for the team and serve as a liaison between the team leads/contributors and students.

The team will be divided into three subteams focused on survey analysis, interview data, and HER analysis. Team sessions will include time for separate work and time for discussion across subteams to ensure shared understanding of the progress of the project as a whole and so that different areas can inform one other and students can learn about methods that are not their strand’s focus.

Some students may have the opportunity to travel to a conference during the summer or academic year.

Timing

Fall 2025 – Spring 2026

• Fall 2025: Create annotated bibliographies; develop statistical analysis plan and begin analysis; develop qualitative data collection instruments and IRB amendment; create statistical analysis plan and conduct queries of Electronic Health Records, data cleaning and preliminary analyses
• Spring 2026: Continue quantitative analysis; implement qualitative interviews; continue Electronic Health Records analysis and draft results; develop and implement community-facing data walk

Crediting

Academic credit available for fall and spring semesters