What happened to the tiny Canadian farming town where everyone got free money?

Everyone who needed it would get free money.

The effect of the policy was astonishing. Dauphin, Manitoba thrived in almost every way.

Doctor’s visits and hospitalisations declined, mental health improved and more teenagers completed high school. It seemed that everyone was happier.

Now, policymakers around the world are again looking at the experiment to see if it could hold the key to our future.

The scheme worked like this: everyone would have a guaranteed annual income, or “Mincome”, with monthly cheques supplementing the poorest people’s earnings and rewarding them for extra hours.

Fears that a guaranteed income would disincentivise workers proved unfounded.

The only substantial difference in workforce contribution was among new mothers, who tended to stay at home with their babies for longer, and teenagers who no longer had to work to support their families.

It was the largest experiment of its kind, taking place over four years from 1974-79. But despite its success, the project was abandoned and never led to the kind of social change many had hoped it would.

But the idea of a guaranteed income has extraordinary potential to rid society of the universal problem where low-income workers can slave away at several jobs but are unable to escape poverty, and more likely to spiral ever further into debt.

Canadian social scientist Evelyn Forget wrote a paper on Mincome in 2011, called “The Town With No Poverty”.

She found that the effects of the experiment extended beyond the eligible families (those with an income of below $12,000), describing it as a “social multiplier effect” :Her report is available here: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20(2).pdf

Read more here:  http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-mincome-experiment-dauphin