Giving people free money from the taxpayers doesn’t cut crime. That’s true even when the money reduces poverty among poor people who get it, by giving them a guaranteed basic income. “Do you think giving folks a basic income would reduce crime? Think again. ‘We estimate precise zero effects of [basic income] on criminal perpetration,'” notes Professor John Holbein. Holbein is quoting from a National Bureau of Economic Research study by academics from three different countries, who found that giving people a basic income at taxpayer expense did nothing to cut crime.
But advocates of basic-income programs wrongly claim they will cut crime and help the economy. “Despite previous experiments failing, Illinois state lawmakers are handing out $827,272 in free money that discourages people from working and ultimately cuts their incomes,” reports the Illinois Policy Institute:
The state’s 2026 budget includes a grant for a guaranteed income program, even though a recent three-year program in Illinois showed participants decided to work less and had less income. From November 2020 to October 2023, a guaranteed income pilot program in northern Illinois, including Chicago, and Texas gave 1,000 recipients $1,000 per month.
The program caused participants to work 3.9 percentage points less, according to research from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Because work is the best pathway out of poverty, program participants are more likely to remain in low-income brackets.
Reducing workforce participation will likely hurt recipients’ children, too. Children who grow up with working adults are more likely to climb the economic ladder, research has shown.
The program also caused participants’ earned income to drop by $1,800. One cause of this was their decision to work one to two fewer hours per week. Other workers in the household also decided to reduce their hours by one to two hours a week.
The research study showed participants did not see an increase in the quality of their employment, degree attainment, or physical or mental health. The primary gains were an increase in leisure time and an increase in “entrepreneurial activities and willingness to take risks due to the transfers.”
The harms are not surprising because these programs have had similar outcomes elsewhere. In Canada, the government of Ontario halted a three-year program after only 15 months because it was expensive and not helping.
Despite these problems, Cook County recently decided to make its own guaranteed income pilot a permanent program with $7.5 million from its 2026 budget proposal.
Instead of spending taxpayer money on programs that already have failed in many states, government officials should focus on increasing job opportunities and economic growth. As the Illinois Policy Institute notes, ways of creating more jobs and growth include cutting the state’s occupational licensing burden, repealing harmful regulations that stifle hiring and investment, and creating a career-first education system that teaches useful skills.
Poverty doesn’t force people to commit crimes. As Professor James Q. Wilson, an authority on public administration, once noted, “During the 1960’s, one neighborhood in San Francisco had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with incomes under four thousand dollars a year, the least educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate, and the highest proportion of substandard housing. That neighborhood was called Chinatown. Yet, in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.” See Crime & Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime (1985).
