Universality-based approaches reinforce cycles of poverty and discrimination---targeted income is key to resolve structural inequities

Universal basic income (UBI) was propelled into mainstream awareness during Andrew Yang’s campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidacy. Now, programs offering monthly cash payments to specific communities have sprung up across the country. But while the public often conflates UBI with these programs, economic justice activists warn that they have very different goals. Many anti-poverty groups agree that strategically targeted guaranteed income, not UBI, is the best path forward to ending poverty, advancing gender and racial equity and supporting low-income Americans.

In 2020, Yang’s focus on UBI helped raise public awareness of the policy. His “Freedom Dividend” promised to give $1,000 per month to every American adult—”everyone from a hedge fund billionaire in New York to an impoverished single mom in West Virginia,” Yang’s own site explained.

For many economic justice experts, Yang’s proposal raised red flags. Clearly, a monthly stipend will have an extremely different impact on people based on their level of wealth and income. But UBI doesn’t take this context into account. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates would receive the same $1,000 as every low-income young adult struggling to pay for college tuition.

On the other hand, guaranteed income is targeted at the groups that need it most. It involves monthly payments of unrestricted cash, like UBI, but takes societal and historical context into account. It’s designed to be a minimum “income floor” that ensures nobody is forced to live in poverty. Because of racial and gender wealth gaps, women of color are disproportionately likely to be low-income and face systemic barriers in higher education and attaining high-paying jobs. So, guaranteed income programs like the Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT) focus on low-income Black women to address the deeply entrenched economic inequities caused by systemic racism and sexism.

Under a universal basic income, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates would receive the same $1,000 as every low-income young adult struggling to pay for college tuition.

Instead of giving money equally to everyone, thus reinforcing the current system and letting women of color continue to fall behind, guaranteed income centers equity. By providing $1,000 per month for a year to Black women living in extreme poverty in Mississippi, MMT gives support to those who need it most and empowers women to invest in their families and futures.

“Our country’s economic system has historically barred Black people from not just upward mobility, but basic human necessities such as water, food and shelter,” explained Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, which runs MMT. “Practices like redlining and discriminatory employment policies have led to the current reality of massive income and wealth gaps between people of color and their white counterparts. This work is about more than guaranteed income. It is about the shaping and nurturing of radical possibilities. Our goal is to place Black women at the center—not at the center of pain, but of pathways to plenty—so that our communities, our families, we, can do more than survive, can thrive, can be secure in a place of becoming.”

By prioritizing Black women, guaranteed income has the potential to make a difference for those struggling the most, and alleviate some of the racialized disadvantages low-income people of color face. In 2021, when parents received monthly payments through the expanded child tax credit (CTC), child poverty decreased by around 30 percent, with the CTC reaching more than 61 million children.

But in January, after the six months of payments ended, low-income Black and Latino families were hit hard: The childhood poverty rate rose from 12 percent in December to 17 percent in January—and soared to over 23 percent for Latino children and 25 percent for Black children.

Like the CTC, which supports low-income parents, guaranteed income would have an intersectional impact, helping those who need it instead of giving unnecessary money to well-off Americans.