In 2015, Finland’s government announced it was looking to put a universal basic income in place that would be paid by the country’s social security body, Kela, to all non-retired adults and that would be piloted at the start of 2017. As previously intended, a team of researchers at Kela will run the pilot scheme and the relevant texts for implementing the pilot have just been published and adopted by parliament. The pilot scheme will be rolled out from 01 January 2017 to 2,000 randomly selected out of work adults who will receive a basic €560 per month and will still have access to the in-kind benefits to which they are entitled. The pilot comes to a close at the end of 2018.
The pilot is being conducted with a group of randomly selected adults between 25 and 58 years of age and they will each receive a basic unemployment pension. The €560 per month will be tax-free and will replace their former unemployment benefit payments. Participation will be mandatory so as to ensure the integrity of the results. The idea is to see if the universal basic income will incentivize the out of work to more willingly accept employment positions. A second randomly selected 2,000 control group to which the current rules will apply will be used for comparison.
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