There was a mistaken perception in the middle of 2018 that Finland - under its centre-right government - had put an end to its universal basic income experiment. As Wired magazine reminded us, this was not exactly so: what happened was that the Government had refused to extend it beyond its initial plan, but were going to process the findings, and see if they supported a resumption and expansion in 2020.

And this week, we have the preliminary results of the Finnish experiment (here’s the main report and PDF). As reported by the New Scientist, one of its immediate results is that it disproves one of the phobias about UBI - that it reduces the incentives to take up paid work (the “free-rider” problem):

The experiment began in December 2016. Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, randomly selected 2000 people aged between 25 and 58 from across the country who were on unemployment benefits.

It then replaced those people’s benefits with a guaranteed payment of €560 a month. They would continue receiving the payments whether they got a job or not.

The experiment ended on 31 December 2018… It compared the income, employment status and general wellbeing of those who received the UBI with a control group of 5000 who carried on receiving benefits.

There was no difference between the two groups in terms of the number of days in employment in 2017 – both groups worked on average 49 days. The UBI trial group only earned €21 less on average than the control group during 2017.

What is really interesting are the reported levels of heightened wellbeing among those experimenting. “The surveys also showed that the UBI group perceived their health and stress levels to be significantly better than in the control group”, reports the NS.