COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Finnish officials say a nationwide experiment with basic income has not increased employment among those participating during the first year of the trial, but their general well-being seems to have increased.
A report by Finland's Social Insurance Institution, or Kela, looked at the first year of the trial. It said Friday that "it was not yet possible to draw any firm conclusions" from the experiment, where about 2,000 randomly selected, unemployed people got a tax-free 560-euro ($636) monthly income with no questions asked.
Finland became in January 2017 the first European country to launch the trial, which will end in 2020.
Kela said basic income recipients had fewer stress symptoms and were more confident in their future than a 5,000-member control group of social benefit recipients.
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