Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's Government set customer orientation of
services as one of the strategic objectives of the Governmental
Programme. To achieve this goal, Sipilä’s government decided to launch a
basic income experiment during its term. By experimenting with basic
income, Sipilä’s government tried to find out whether the introduction
of a basic income could make the social security system in Finland more
inclusive and further increase the labour supply.



The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and Kela - The Social
Insurance Institution of Finland have agreed on the assessment of the
basic income experiment. The assessment of the basic income experiment
is carried out by Kela, together with the VATT Institute for Economic
Research, the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki, the
La-bour Institute for Economic Research, the Finnish Association for
Mental Health and Tänk. The scientific director of the research project
is Programme Director (SRC) Olli Kangas, from the University of Turku,
and the administrative director is Research Professor Jaana Martikainen,
from Kela.



The Basic Income Experiment Evaluation Project studies the effects
of basic income, utilizing both registry, survey and interview data. The
research results of the subprojects will be reported in stages during
the evaluation research project running from 2019 to 2020.



This report is the first research publication presenting the effects
of the basic income experiment in Finland. It includes a preliminary
register-based statistical analysis of the employment effects of the
experiment for 2017. An analysis based on survey data examines the
impact of the experiment on the wellbeing of the basic income recipients