Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's Government implemented a basic income experiment in Finland in 2017–2018.
The aim of the basic income experiment was to explore ways of reforming the social security
system so that it would better respond to changes in working life.
The experiment also aimed to find out if the social security system could be made more
inclusive and if it could provide a stronger incentive to work, as well as if basic income
would reduce the administrative burden and simplify the complicated benefit system.
The planning and implementation of the experiment were carried out as planned.
Preliminary results from the first year of the pilot indicate that the persons receiving
basic income did not find jobs better or worse than the control group.
Their wellbeing, however, was better than that of the control group.
Compared with the control group, those who received basic income suffered clearly less
from stress symptoms, health concerns, and problems with memory and concentration.
The results show that the persons who received basic income also had more confidence in their
future and believed in their opportunities of influence in society than those in the
control group.
Reforming the social security system is a topical matter.
The basic income experiment contributes such information to this debate as could not have
been gathered without the experiment.
By experimenting new models of operation in a small scale, we can get information on how
the models work and whether they could be taken into use in the whole country.
The lessons learned from the planning and implementation of the basic income experiment
can be used in future in other new experiment projects.