UpLift Project Coordinators

Kay Henderson

A special pilot project is studying whether basic income could help struggling Iowans meet everyday needs. We'll visit with the project coordinators about how it's working on this edition of Iowa Press.

 

 

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, December 1st edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

 

 

Kay Henderson

For those who struggle to cover rents, pay for food and prescription medications, or even cover the cost of a car repair, how might 500 extra dollars a month impact their situation? Our guests here are involved in a pilot project to do that research. Ashley Ezzio and Michael Berger are both project coordinators for Uplift. It's the Central Iowa Basic Income Pilot Project. They're here today to talk about it. Welcome to Iowa Press.

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

Thanks for having us

 

 

Kay Henderson

Also joining the conversation are Linh Ta of Axios Des Moines and Clay Masters of Iowa Public Radio.

 

 

Clay Masters

Well, first off, Ashley, can you just give us an overview of just what this project actually is?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

Absolutely. So this is a research study. We're really studying the impacts of a $500 monthly stipend on the well-being of 110 participants here in central Iowa. So this research study is really looking at that. And it came together with 11 different funding entities who were really concerned about poverty reduction strategies in central Iowa. Efforts were led by the mid-Iowa Health Foundation, Principal’s Foundation, Wells Fargo. We've got a lot of public entities as well, and philanthropic entities that supported the project. And really, we're looking at what are the most promising practices for reducing poverty in communities. So Michael and I are heading up an experiment that gives 110 individuals $500 for 24 months. They were randomly selected. Our research partners at the University of Pennsylvania and Des Moines University are helping us do this randomized controlled trial. So we have 140 people who are in a control group. They don't receive the monthly income payments, but they do take the same periodic surveys so we can measure impact across this.

 

 

Linh Ta

And Michael, can you talk about how did you select these 110 individuals to be in the project?

 

 

Michael Berger

Yeah. So because it's a research study, it was completely randomized. Our recruitment strategy approach that we used, we really leaned on our community partners and our relationships with community based organizations. So they did the initial outreach for us. And we did that for two reasons because they had the relationship and the trust with the communities that are often left out of these opportunities and often not a part of these programs. So that's how we kind of went about recruitment. We are doing it across Polk, Dallas and Warren County. So we also do have some rural folks out there. And so we realized our approach was not necessarily going to work out there just because there's not as many community services. Also not as many community resources as well. So we went to some more traditional recruitment strategies where we went to advertisements in newspapers, radio stations, we did social media and we also did have some community partners as well that they sent a mailer for us, which was honestly one of our better recruitment strategies that was used in our rural communities. So it was completely randomized. But what we did do is we weighted it based off of metropolitan micropolitan and then rural communities. Because our concern was there's so many community resources within Polk County and the metro area that the people out in rural areas are not going to hear about it. And so they're not going to have the opportunity to participate. So we weighted it based off of the population density in central Iowa. So when you look at the population density in Polk, Dallas and Warren County, 65% live in the metropolitan area, 25% live in the micropolitan area, and then 10% live in the rural area. So that very exact population density and distribution is what you will see in our sample. So we made sure to capture those voices and perspectives from rural communities as well.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Michael, If I could just intervene here, what's micropolitan for people who aren't statistics?

 

 

Michael Berger

Yeah, So micropolitan did it based off of how big the town was. So it is in between 10 and 50 thousand folks that are living in the area. So that's what is considered micropolitan.

 

 

Linh Ta

Can you just speak a little bit about, you know, who are some of these families? We saw that about 85% of the people who were selected were women? Can you both talk a little bit about why that may occur?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

We see this happen nationally. We see it across public benefits in general. Women are typically taking on more of the caregiving roles, and therefore in households may be the ones to apply for public benefits or assistance. We also see a large proportion of women being single parent households, meaning they may be in more need for a program such as this. And so I think that's why we saw such a high percentage of females applying. And we do see that nationally across as well.

 

 

Kay Henderson

What's the age distribution?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

Our average age is about 37 years for the applicants that applied.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And you wanted to add something, Michael?

 

 

Michael Berger

Yeah, I was just going to say that because we also see a higher proportion of women that apply, they're also more likely to be connected to community resources. Which that was our primary recruitment strategy, and so that's like that explains why we see that. And as Ashley kind of said, that's normal to see across these pilots is to see a higher proportion of women applying for these.

 

 

Clay Masters

So is there anything that guarantees that other services like access to child care, are not eliminated or blocked if people are receiving this kind of funding? How does that get put into consideration? Michael?

 

 

Michael Berger

So that was one of the things that we took into consideration really early on. So this $500 every single month comes out to 6000 every single year. So we do have participants are receiving public benefits. When we went through on boarding, we had a benefits calculator where we were able to do an estimation of what the potential impact might be on some of their benefits. We also partnered with Disability Rights Iowa, and they have certified benefits counselors that we also worked with, where with some of the benefits like SSI and SSDI, where it was higher on our radar to make sure that we weren't going to touch that just because of how reliant people are on receiving that money. And so it was just part of the conversation during onboarding saying, Hey, we're going to receive this money, but we can't guarantee that it might not kick you off of your benefits. So we're going to do all of this informing. We're going to get an estimation of what this does for you. But ultimately, the reason behind all of that was to give them as much information as possible so that they can make a decision for themselves. We did have some participants where they realized this $500 was not actually going to be beneficial. An increase in $500 every month where they're going to lose $700 every single month in benefits doesn't make the most sense. And so some of the participants that were selected did have to opt out when we were doing the onboarding. But that's the reason why we did it, because we didn't want to cause any harm to people to be a part of this pilot.

 

 

Clay Masters

Ashley, anything that you would add to that?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

No, I think benefits protection was a huge piece of that. We learned from national pilots what was best practice there. And giving people the autonomy to make choices that were best for them. They’re experts in their own lives and what's best. And we reinforced those by providing experts for them to make a decision.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Are you primarily talking about state child care assistance and qualification for Medicaid?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

I would say that we had a variety of public benefits that were more or less at risk for being impacted by this income. Child care assistance being one of them.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So, I'm just wondering if there are any limitations on how the $500 may be spent. Michael?

 

 

Michael Berger

So there are no limitations at all. There's no restrictions. They can use it for whatever they deem fit to meet their needs. They get the payments on a prepaid debit card and those payments come out every single month it hits that account. It kind of works like a bank account, but there are some kind of limitations to that. But it's a Visa, so wherever Visa is accepted, they can use that. They can withdraw it as cash if they want to. They can move the money to another bank account if they prefer that. Or if they want to put direct deposits onto this card, an account that that we provided them, they can also do that as well. But otherwise no restrictions on what they could use the funds for.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So are they sharing what they're spending the extra money on?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

So, yes, we actually track spending data. While it is not specific to a certain purchase, we can see high level categories that allows us to compare to what other national pilot and the spending that happens there. So we see categories such as grocery and food or retail or transportation, rent, health care expenses. So we can see and categorize each of these spending patterns if that purchase is made on that prepaid debit card.

 

 

Linh Ta

Ashley, can you talk a little bit, how long has the pilot program been going on now for? And what are some of your preliminary findings?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

So we began issuing payments to participants in May of 2023. And so we have about seven payments in almost eight. And so far, what we're seeing with this is just in those short months, folks are able to move to safer housing or maybe more accessible housing. They're paying for really boring things such as groceries, rent, laundry detergents, those types of things. But then they're also making changes in careers. They're, you know, allowing their children to engage and extracurricular activities and expand that as well. While we won't have final findings until the summer of 2026, payments will extend through 2025. So that's 24 months of payments. Once we collect all of that data, Michael and I will do a robust share of what all that data is and what we learned from this pilot.

 

 

Linh Ta

How are you measuring success in the program? What kind of changes are you looking for in it?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

So we're really looking to see mental health, emotional well-being, their financial well-being overall. We're also interested in how folks are engaging in civic activities, how their children are engaging in school, how do they show up at work. So there's a number of variety of things we're looking at. The University of Pennsylvania, their Center for Guaranteed Income Research, has done a lot of these pilots. And so we're using their best practice in those indicators and what we're hoping to see.

 

 

Clay Masters

So you mentioned improvement of mental health. So are you checking in with these people regularly, interviewing them? How do you measure mental health success?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

So we mentioned periodic surveys. So upon application, folks took a survey to apply and then that's given every six months to both our intervention and control group. Within that survey, it asks about perceived stress. It's asking about how they're feeling connected to other individuals in their life. And so those are validated tools that we're using to measure mental health outcomes.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So, Michael, I cover politics. And so in the last presidential campaign, I covered Andrew Yang. And he talked about universal basic income, which is a different thing, which everybody would get a payment. And people who criticized that idea at the time used phrases like socialism. And one person said, you know, you're supposed to teach somebody how to fish, not give them a fish. So how do you answer the critics of this kind of concept?

 

 

Michael Berger

Well, I think it's really important for us to kind of level set with what we are studying. So Uplift is studying basic income. Universal basic income is, I think, kind of the touchpoint that most people hear about. But it's different. As you said, it's provided to everybody, regardless of where you live, how much income you're making, what your family size is. And so that's not what we are studying here. We're studying basic income, which it is a reoccurring payment identified to meet basic needs. And so I think making that distinction is really important so that we're not getting confused with what we are studying here, because we are not studying our universal basic income, but rather basic income as potentially an additional benefits model.

 

 

Clay Masters

So if you are successful, which sounds like there's a lot of different ways that you can measure success here, but where would the money continue to come from if this is deemed a success to move forward? Ashley?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

So I think this is a community led project. And so when we think about sustainability and next steps, we really want to hear what the community learns and thinks and want for those. In addition to sharing all of these outcomes, Michael and I are also hosting community conversations where we can really gain insights and opinions of what our public thinks of a basic income or, as Michael just said, benefits model innovation. What could this lead to? And so I think it's a broad question that we're hoping to learn about. And we hope that those next steps are driven by the community and what they see fit for next.

 

 

Linh Ta

Michael, can you talk a little bit about, you know, what are some of the struggles that Iowa families are dealing with that you hope this pilot project helps alleviate?

 

 

Michael Berger

Yeah, So just from our participants, I mean, they're dealing…the first two things that come to mind is child care, being able to afford childcare and even accessing it more so even with our rural communities. But then also with housing. Housing instability is another big issue that a lot of our participants face, and then even many Iowans. Food insecurity is another thing that comes up. And then also their ability to deal with an unexpected expense. And the reason with the unable to be dealing with an unexpected expense, what that does for these folks is that it really shifts their mindset. They are now so concerned and focused on the here and the now where they don't have the room to breathe. They don't have the finances to know I have a cushion behind me if a medical emergency happens or, you know, my car breaks down and I need to get that fixed. And so they are unable then to think long term because they are dealing day to day what are the fires that I need to put out? They can't be thinking about what if I want my kid to go to college? What if I want to go to college? What do I want to do for retirement? Like these are not things that they're able to think about because they don't have that support behind them. If there was an emergency or something that can happen at any point to anybody.

 

 

Linh Ta

Have you found that, you know, some of these struggles have been exacerbated since the pandemic and with some of the inflation that's going on right now?

 

 

Michael Berger

I think it was definitely highlighted by those two things. Yes.

 

 

Clay Masters

Interested to, you know, a lot of social work that's done for communities that need support has a lot to do with the educational component of how do people receive the services. How do you even understand navigating a public transit system, the busing. What's going on, is there anything that's going into the education component for people who might be using this as to how to spend this money or, you know, just ways of accessing the needs that they might have, actually?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

So I think that's a really interesting question that we get often. And one of the things that we wanted to make sure was very clean in our research was that we are only studying what cash does. And so we are not at liberty to add any other interventions. While if our clients reached out and needed resources with our community support, we would be able to connect them. But this is really to see is cash alone with no other interventions, no other education, is this effective? And so that's the model we're studying. Other pilots may add in different things, such as some education around long term planning or financial well-being. And with us, we're really looking at just cash.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Ashley, you mentioned that, you know, private companies like Principal Financial and Wells Fargo have given money to support this project. Is there any project or program anywhere in the country where this is actually happening now and it's getting private sector rather than public sector support?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

Yes. So I would say our pilot is really unique in the sense that I mentioned those corporate sponsors. But we also have public engagement, city of Des Moines, city of Urbandale, city of Windsor Heights, Polk County. And then we have our philanthropic partners, Bank of America, Telligen Community Initiative, the Directors Council, and United Way of Central Iowa. So a large portion of our community came together and said, we're interested. When we look at the national landscape, pilots are moving into more of a permanent structure which may be housed in a public entity. Cook County is what comes to mind.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Chicago.

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

Yes, they are implementing a permanent program and they are providing almost 2000 individuals with a basic income. And they'll go cohort by cohort. So two years of receiving payments, and then they'll roll off and a new cohort will begin.

 

 

Linh Ta

Michael, can you talk a little bit about, you know, what do you think would be needed in the Des Moines and Iowa area to help make a project like this permanent, similar to Cook County?

 

 

Michael Berger

I think it's just the support from the community, right. Knowing that it's something that the community is interested in and how also it should be implemented. Which is why Ashley and I we’re having our community conversations. Because it doesn't necessarily work so well when you try to prescribe a certain playbook from somewhere else and try to apply it here because we just look so different. We're across three different counties. That's unique in the national landscape. But that's what we're really hoping to learn from our community conversations. Like, what do you think this looks like? Who should be administering it? How much do people getting paid and how should they be getting paid? And by doing it this way, then you have people within the community like, Hey, this is where my voice has gone to. This is something that I think works for me, works for my family, works for my other community members. So I think it really starts there and why we are going into the community and starting with them when trying to figure that question out.

 

 

Clay Masters

So this is a two year project, right? And so spring of 2025 would be when the final payment would go forward. It looks like the final report would come out in the summer of 2026. What happens in the interim there between those two dates? Ashley?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

So that's where the conversations really come into play. That's where we're having, we're inviting community, we're inviting all of our leaders to come around and say, here's what we know from the national landscape. Here's what Michael and I are learning from our participants. And while we wait for these final findings, providing education and awareness that this could be a benefits model innovation. How could this work? What are the ideas? What are the pitfalls? What's happening? And so I really think those conversations are what comes in between while we wait for final findings. That way we can really activate and leverage those findings for next steps.

 

 

Linh Ta

You have a mix of rural and urban like you've talked about. You know, you have Polk County, Warren County. Are you expecting participants between rural and urban to spend the money differently in any way?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

I do think so. I think that rent looks very different in Milo than it does here in Des Moines. And so we are very interested in what those differences are. How they were spent, how it worked. And we're actually seeing that from a region in the Midwest with basic income pilots. Really looking at what do rural Iowans need and how does that compare to our metropolitan or micropolitan areas.

 

 

Kay Henderson

So you mentioned Cook County. What conclusion did they reach that would propel essentially perhaps the city council in Chicago? Is that who made the decision? Or Cook County supervisors or whomever governs them? What was the thing that made them say, we need to spend this money on this group of 2000 people?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

I think the results showed that folks were able to meet their basic needs in a way that best supported them. They were able to reach economic stability with this kind of income payment. And I think that data that they collected was very powerful in persuading their decision makers to go ahead and make that a permanent structure. So I think it came down to a lot of different things, such as efficient public policy. I think it came down to seeing health and wellbeing outcomes increase. And that would be my guess in what was the driving force.

 

 

Kay Henderson

I guess the question here is if I am a government official and I say I want to spend this money on this project, it will save me money on the back end. Is that what you're saying, Michael?

 

 

Michael Berger

Well, that's what we're hoping to learn, especially here in central Iowa. As I said, it looks different when we have three different counties. We're hoping that this does inform discussions around how do we more efficiently and effectively use our community's resources. I mean, wouldn't it be great if we're able to spend less money but also get to either the same outcomes or better outcomes for our community? I think one of the beautiful things about basic income that we hear from other communities is how it feeds back into the community. While yes, it is select individuals receiving it, that money bleeds out into local businesses. They're helping their families out. And so there's this multiplier effect that other pilots are seeing that it's not just about the individual and the family, while they are, you know, the people that are receiving it. It's improving community wide economic stability and in doing it in an efficient manner.

 

 

Clay Masters

Are there conclusions that can come out of this that would kind of reassess how the money is being spent in the sense of I had a colleague who recently was covering something in the state about the lack of just child care services that there are in Iowa. I guess I'm just kind of playing devil's advocate here to think of would there be better ways to spend this money and existing programs that are currently underfunded or there are needs within the community that need to be addressed? Michael?

 

 

Michael Berger

I think that is a that is a good question. Yeah. I think the thing about basic income is giving people the flexibility to determine that, right? I mean, it's if you put up these child care centers or you start funding them, but people still can't access them, is it really helping the community? And if it's only helping a certain amount of people that can access it, then who's being left out of that as well? So I think with the basic income, it really gives you the autonomy, the freedom, the financial independence for them to say, what's important to me and my family? And how can I use this to support the goals that I have like long term as well?

 

 

Clay Masters

Ashley, were you going to add something to that?

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

Yeah. When you bring up child care, I'm just thinking Michael and I are trying to immerse ourselves in all of these very specific priority areas in our community. And child care has been deemed kind of a crisis in our community. And so when I think about your question related to how to spend money with that, when we look at the child care crisis, there is an employment, a job and labor aspect to that. And so when we look at perhaps low wage workers, which child care employees are some of the lowest paid, I think that a basic income comes into play. And stabilizing and making sure that they are meeting a livable wage in order to provide the care and education that our community needs for children. And so while it may not be spent in the way of putting this into a child care center, this really is put into the workforce and so that we can elevate these folks that are really providing crucial services in our communities.

 

 

Kay Henderson

We have about 20 seconds left. I'll ask you, Michael, are you seeing that you mentioned mental health. Is this cohort of people using mental health services or trying to access mental health services differently now?

 

 

Michael Berger

I’m honestly unsure. That first survey went out in October. We don't know what the results are and also our connection to the participants. The only contact that we have with them is if they come to us asking to be connected with any sort of resources. So I don't think I can actually accurately answer that question.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, I can accurately say we're out of time for this conversation. Thank you both for sharing your views.

 

 

Ashley Ezzio

Thank you. Thanks

 

 

Michael Berger

Thank you for having us.

 

 

Kay Henderson

You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at Iowa PBS.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

 

 

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