(Radio Iowa) – A pilot program that will study the effect of providing a monthly basic income on reducing poverty will make its first payments next month to a group of central Iowa residents. The project called UpLift will give 110 people in Polk, Dallas and Warren counties 500 dollars each month for the next two years. Project coordinator Michael Berger says there are no restrictions on how the money can be used as financial emergencies are unpredictable. “So that’s why our approach to it and our perspective is, okay, if you give people the money to meet their needs and then let them determine how best to meet those needs, what is the result and outcomes of that approach?,” Berger says.

Des Moines University is leading the study, and their public health chair, Rachelle Reimer says they will be conducting surveys every six months with participants and will also follow a control group of residents who don’t receive the money. “These community members are living in very complex systems and it’s hard to isolate the impact of one thing, and so the only way we can really know for certain the impact of this unrestricted basic income is to compare it with another group of similar individuals,” Reimer says.

The UpLift participants were randomly selected from six-thousand applicants for the program. Payments begin going out on May 15th. The funding for the program comes from federal pandemic relief money, as well as local private and nonprofit foundations.