Direct cash assistance helped Oklahoma families. Could these pandemic payments help pave the way for a Universal Basic Income?
Blog Post
April 23, 2021
Nancy Blanchard was enrolling her soon-to-be 2-year-old in an early childhood program in Oklahoma in October 2020 when she received what she describes as a shock: She and her family were eligible for a $500 direct cash assistance payment.
The infusion of cash enabled Blanchard, whose husband is unable to work due to a car accident, to put the money toward utility payments as well as clothes and other items for her daughter.
“It was like a weight off your shoulders,” the 34-year-old said. “It helped us tremendously.”
Blanchard and her family were among more than 2,200 families in the Tulsa County area who received direct cash assistance during 2020. Last May, when Congress was at an impasse over with whether to provide further stimulus payments, national and local philanthropic organizations stepped in in Tulsa County, said Cynthia Jasso, the associate director of Community Engagement for the Birth through Eight Strategy for Tulsa, also known as BEST, an initiative of the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The foundation seeks to alleviate intergenerational poverty in this Heartland city. The families received a one-time payment of between anywhere from $500 to $1,000.
“At the onset of the pandemic, we were hearing from families and frontline staff members that our community and our county was being acutely impacted by the pandemic and, in particular, financially our families were struggling,” Jasso said. “They were getting eviction notices or water was getting shut off and so the emergency cash incentives were really one way to meet the moment and be responsive to the needs of our community.”
BEST worked with national organizations with expertise in cash assistance programs, as well as Tulsa-based nonprofits agencies who knew the needs of local families, she added.
The effort started in May 2020 and has since sent more than $1.6 million dollars to more than 2,200 Tulsa families with young children. The idea was first introduced by staff members of BEST’s partner organizations, who were hearing directly from families and caregivers impacted by financial hardship because of the pandemic. The BEST program sent its final payment in November 2020 and has completed deploying cash assistance for the time being, Jasso said.
“We learned a lot from the effort,” she added. “We are in a phase of trying to determine where we go from here.”
Jasso believes similar efforts could be replicated elsewhere. She said the organization did a lot of research to see what other communities were doing - from Chicago to cities in California. “I think it’s definitely replicable,” she said.
Across the country, foundations, cities and other entities are piloting projects around universal basic income. Supporters of the movement say it provides for basic living expenses to cover unpaid work and unforeseen circumstances like a medical emergency — or a pandemic — and could become crucial as automation and technology rapidly reshape work and could mean the end of millions of jobs. For families working, or struggling to find work, child care is the second largest expense in their family budgets in the United States, and direct cash payments, experts argue, can help families cover the cost of finding the care they need so they can work to support their families and build economic security.
Other projects are already underway. The Ford Foundation created the Families and Workers Fund during the first wave of the coronavirus last year to help individuals and families affected by COVID-19. Meanwhile, the Magnolia Mother’s Trust gives $1,000 per month to single Black mothers for one year. That program has enabled the mothers to pay off debt, pay bills like child care, spend more time with family and restart their educations.
And many hail the child tax credit that the Biden administration has proposed, which will send $250 to $350 to families with children under 17 every month, as another indicator that the controversial idea is gaining traction.
To Natalie Foster, co-founder of the Economic Security Project, a network exploring guaranteed income, the pandemic has shown the importance of a guaranteed income or universal basic income. Guaranteed income and universal basic income share the idea of cash transfers with no strings attached. “Both of these share the idea of a guarantee - it’s money that no strings are attached to and a floor that no one can fall through,” she said. “That’s what is sorely missing in our safety net.”
Even before the pandemic hit, raising a child — particularly affording the cost of child care — was hard for many families. According to the Consumer Expenditures Survey, which is based on data from 2015, a family will spend nearly $13,000 per child in a middle-income two-child, married-couple family. Middle-income, married-couple parents of a child born in 2015 may expect to spend $233,610 for food, shelter and other necessities to raise a child through age 17, which does not include the cost of a college education. The study reports that housing accounts for the largest share of the costs, with food second and child care/education third.
A study from the Brookings Institution further breaks down the costs: One estimate pegs the average weekly cost of full-time daycare at $196 per child, or about $10,000 per year. Costs vary by location, age of the child and the form of child care, with costs ranging from a few thousand a year to tens of thousands per year.
Foster believes deep investments in the care economy will be necessary to help families overcome these costs, but a guaranteed income should accompany investment in infrastructure. Creating an “income floor” would cover the cost of unpaid work families are doing to get by, Foster said. This would allow people to make choices during events like a pandemic.
In Tulsa County, to be eligible for the assistance, families had to be impacted by COVID-19 in some way. “It could be anything from a loss of wages or work, but ultimately having some sort of impact from COVID-19,” Jasso said. Families also had to have young children and live in Tulsa County.
In one instance, Jasso recalled, the $500 assistance was enough to help a mother get out of a domestic violence situation and put a deposit down on an apartment.
“I think that was one of the most heart-wrenching but inspiring stories about the impact that this had,” Jasso added. But there were many others.
In December, as a single mother of eight children, Norma Sanchez was worried about what she would do for Christmas.
Her home business of personalizing items such as mugs and t-shirts wasn’t bringing in as much money during the pandemic, but she still wanted to give her children a special holiday, especially during such a dismal 2020.
That’s when she learned about direct cash assistance through Tulsa’s BEST program.
The 35-year-old received $500, which helped her buy gifts for her children, who range in age from 2 years old to 18 years old, for Christmas.
“One little gift makes a change to them. You can only imagine how much of a blessing it was,” Sanchez said.