A federal–provincial guaranteed annual income experiment in Manitoba, best known for its 'saturation site' in the town of Dauphin, where any resident could apply. It ended in 1979 without a final report; later analyses found small reductions in work and an 8.5% fall in hospitalisation.
In the late 1960s and 1970s North American governments seriously considered replacing patchwork welfare with a guaranteed annual income, typically designed as a negative income tax: a payment to every household, reduced as its other income rises. The United States ran four negative-income-tax experiments between 1968 and 1982. Canada's contribution was Mincome, the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment, announced in a news release on 22 February 1974 under Edward Schreyer's New Democratic Party government in Manitoba and funded jointly with Pierre Trudeau's federal government.
Strictly, Mincome was not a universal basic income: payments were means-tested and fell with earnings. But it is often cited in basic-income debates because, in one town, eligibility did not depend on being selected or on work requirements — any resident could apply.
Mincome was financed from federal and provincial budgets as a research programme. Its public good was knowledge — although for decades that knowledge sat in boxes. In 1981 a federal grant established the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Manitoba, which built a machine-readable database; the data and documentation are now available through the university library's Dataverse.
Forget found an 8.5% reduction in the hospitalisation rate for Dauphin participants relative to controls, particularly for accidents, injuries and mental health; fewer contacts with physicians, especially for mental health; and more adolescents continuing into grade 12. She found no increase in fertility or family dissolution. Calnitsky's analysis of archived qualitative accounts from Dauphin participants finds that Mincome's design and framing led recipients to see the payments pragmatically rather than through the moralistic lens applied to welfare, and that participation did not produce social stigma — it was "more normal than welfare".
Mincome left no programme behind, but it shaped later policy debate: its findings featured prominently in the debate around Ontario's 2017 basic income pilot and are a staple of arguments about income guarantees in an age of automation.
Payments ended in 1979 without a final report. Later analyses found work-hour reductions of about 1% for men, 3% for married women and 5% for unmarried women, and in Dauphin an 8.5% fall in hospitalisation relative to controls and more teenagers staying in school.
Changes of government in Manitoba and Ottawa and waning political support ended the experiment in 1979 before results were analysed. A 1981 grant created a research database, and reanalyses from the 2010s revived its influence on basic-income debates.
Using health administration data and a quasi-experimental design, Forget found an 8.5% reduction in the hospitalisation rate for Mincome participants relative to controls, particularly for accidents, injuries and mental health, and more adolescents continuing into grade 12.[1]
Hum and Simpson estimated that Mincome reduced work hours by about 1% for men, 3% for married women and 5% for unmarried women.[1][2][3]
Mincome ended in 1979 without a final report; a 1981 federal grant set up a research institute at the University of Manitoba to build a database of its results, and later reviews set out what the experiment did and did not learn.[1][2]
Drawing on archived qualitative accounts from Dauphin participants, Calnitsky finds that Mincome's design and framing led recipients to view payments pragmatically rather than through the moralistic lens applied to welfare, and that participation did not produce social stigma.[1]