WE ALL KNOW WHERE WE'RE HEADED:

What's being tried in Georgia is not a universal basic income program, which provides steady, unconditional income over the course of years to everyone in a targeted area, like GiveDirectly's work in Kenya. Rather, it's a guaranteed income experiment of the sort that is growing around the world, and which have been connected to positive effects on employment, mental health, housing, and more. Unlike UBI, guaranteed income is more narrowly focused to temporarily help demographic groups that are more likely to experience poverty. The amount of money going to each recipient will often be too small to pay for all of someone's basic needs -- though potentially still big enough to be a life-changing amount.

The GRO/GiveDirectly program will study what recipients use the money on, and the effects of the program on their mental and psychological well-being. "We wanted to listen to the voices of recipients," said Miriam Laker-Oketta, GiveDirectly's research director. "We're looking at multiple areas where we believe that cash should be able to have an impact, but we're listening to stories of the recipients instead of just numbers." (Since program recipients are not randomly assigned to a treatment and control group, the researchers won't try to make causal claims for the program.)

A key aim of the program is to explore the difference between providing much of the cash up front in a lump sum versus parceling out payments over time. Half the women will receive $4,300 up front and $700 for the remaining months -- 24 in all -- while the others will receive $850 each month. The total payments will be the same for both groups: $20,400.

Another difference from other income experiments is exactly who the program is looking to target. While recipients might not exclusively be Black women, it's being explicitly framed by the organizers as "a guaranteed income initiative focused on Black women across the state of Georgia," and will take place in neighborhoods with large Black American populations.

The impetus for designing the program this way is clear: There are deep wealth and income inequalities around race and gender that persist in the US, Georgia, and the Old Fourth Ward.

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