Around the country, programs are popping up to give families an income to help with their household expenses. Known as guaranteed income programs, they target groups that need it most and take into account “societal and historical context.” This isn’t a new phenomenon either— both the Black Panther Party and Martin Luther King had proposals calling for guaranteed income.
Black women especially need and benefit from guaranteed income programs. The data is clear: “[a]mong full-time, year-round workers, Black women typically make just 67 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. This wage gap costs Black women $1,891 per month, $22,692 per year and a staggering loss of $907,680 over a 40-year career.”
These dire statistics are getting worse. Just last year, Black Women’s Equal Pay Day was two months later than it was in 2021, meaning that it took two more months for a Black woman to earn the same amount as their white male counterpart.
As Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities explains, “By centering and improving the situation for Black women, those hit with the double bind of racism and sexism, we are thereby raising the floor for us all.”
It is important to also recognize the unique “legacy of a basic income [which] is inextricably linked to racial justice advocacy of women, particularly Black women.” Founded in the 1960s, the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) played a significant role in advancing the guaranteed income agenda, emphasizing that a standard of living was a basic right and should not be tied to wage earning work. Members of the economic justice group consisted of majority “Black women who came north from the sharecropping South and faced widespread employment discrimination.”
In fact, advocates of guaranteed income note that these payments are not a substitute for earned income, but rather are meant to serve as a buffer so that people can escape the vicious poverty cycle.
According to a report from the Aspen Institute, guaranteed income “programs can be an effective long-term approach to poverty reduction. Recipients tend to spend money on necessities such as shelter, food, and transportation.”
The report also states that guaranteed income pilot programs have demonstrated the ability “to promote public health, including through reduced food insecurity and improved nutrition, through decreased anxiety and depression, and through increased fertility and birth outcomes.”
Presently, there are more than 100 guaranteed income pilots in place in the United States, and ESSENCE is highlighting some of the programs targeted toward Black women:
The Abundant Birth Project is a program of the San Francisco Department of Public Health providing a guaranteed income between $600 to $1,000 for pregnant Black women for one year.
The In Her Hands program is an Atlanta City Council initiative, and through the pilot program, 650 Georgia women will receive $850 per month for the next two years.
The Magnolia Mother’s Trust in Jackson, MS is now in its third cohort and provides $1,000 to Black mothers monthly for 12 months.
Embrace Mothers is a pilot in Birmingham that is “giving 110 single mothers $375 dollars every month — [and] most, if not all of them, are Black women.”
In Multnomah County, the Multnomah Mothers’ Trust Project offers $500 a month to approximately 100 Black female-led households with children who are also receiving services through the WomenFirst or Black Parent Initiative programs.
The Bridge Project in New York City, which started in 2021, initially provided “payments of $500 to $1,000 to Black and Latinx families for the first three years of a newborn’s life.”
The Philly Joy Bank program is aiming to reduce racial disparities with respect to birth outcomes, and eligible Philadelphia residents in the predominantly Black neighborhoods of Cobbs Creek, Strawberry Mansion, and Nicetown-Tioga will receive monthly payments of $1,000.
