The Falling Cost of Basic Income in the United States, 1967–2024: Estimates for a Plan Large Enough to Eliminate Poverty

Abstract This article estimates the cost of Universal Basic Income (UBI) sufficient to eliminate poverty in the United States. It uses the most recent microdata available from the Census Bureau through its Current Population Survey (CPS) public-use microdata files and references historical income data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplements (ASEC) going back to 1967. It finds that UBI (or an equivalent guaranteed income) sufficient to eliminate official poverty is surprisingly affordable and that the cost of UBI as a percentage of GDP has been falling steadily for more than 50 years. Estimates based on the most recent data (from 2024) show the net cost of a UBI set at $16,000 per adult and $8,000 per child (slightly higher than the official poverty line) with a 50 % marginal tax rate is approximately $783.7 billion per year, which is about 2.67 % of GDP. In inflation-adjusted terms, the current cost of a poverty-line UBI as a percentage of GDP has fallen significantly from 9.35 % of GDP in 1967 to 4.95 % in 1995, 3.70 % in 2015, and 2.67 % in 2024. Therefore, as a percentage of GDP, the current cost of a poverty-line UBI is less than one-third (28.6 %) of what it would have cost when the guaranteed income was under discussion in the United States in 1967. This article also updates and significantly improves on calculations made in the article “The Cost of Basic Income: Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations” which appeared in Basic Income Studies in 2017.