First which country in the World has given a basic income to the unemployed?

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

WBPSC Miscellaneous Preliminary Exam 2018 Official Paper (Held On 3rd March 2018)

Answer 1

The Correct Answer is Finland

Key Points

In 2017, Finland became the first country in the world to experiment with a government-backed universal basic income (UBI).
This experiment was run by the Finnish government's social security institution, Kela.
The program gave 2000 randomly chosen unemployed Finns, aged 25 to 58, a monthly stipend of 560 Euros (approximately $635 USD) for two years, regardless of whether they found work during that period.
The purpose of the UBI experiment was to see if this form of welfare could help to boost employment and reduce poverty and inequality.
The final results of the experiment, as published by Kela in 2020, showed that while UBI did not significantly boost employment, it did markedly increase recipients' health and well-being.
Despite mixed results, this groundbreaking experiment brought the idea of UBI into mainstream political discourse.
While Finland was the first to implement such a program on a national level, other countries and cities around the world have since experimented with similar initiatives.