A basic income disproportionately helps minorities because poverty and the pandemic hit them the hardest.

At least 45 cities in the country started some kind of guaranteed income pilot program in 2020 or a few years preceding. The number of programs increased in the pandemic’s wake. Generally, a lottery determines recipients from a pool of eligible applicants. Payments vary from $200 to $1,000 a month. Some cities issue bi-weekly payments. “I was headed towards a deep depression, literally just a week prior to getting the call that I was accepted to the program,” Shamonique Jones, a Newark, New Jersey, resident told ABC News. Jones is a single mother who lives with her four children in a one-bedroom apartment. “I didn’t know how I was gonna get my kids’ uniforms [for school] … I was able to use that to get them their uniforms for school and be able to help us with the holidays and be able to provide Christmas presents for them. It just saved our lives.” Tashonna, a 24-year-old Louisville woman, told the Courier-Journal that her monthly payment of $500 from the city’s guaranteed income program lightens her burden. “It gives you a really big cushion to just make those decisions. If I have $500, do I still need another job or is this enough for me?” The pandemic disproportionately affected Black households, a number of which already survived in poverty. Before the outbreak, the unemployment rate for Black citizens in America was just over 6%. By the time COVID-19 hit, it exceeded 16%. Mayors for Guaranteed Income, a coalition that advocates for more cities to adopt guaranteed income programs, released a dataset that included demographic details and spending information on 20 pilot programs in America. Forty-one percent of the program participants were Black, and 77% of them were women.