15. The Negative Income Tax Experiments of the 1970s

Between 1968 and 1980, the US and Canadian Governments conducted five Negative Income Tax (NIT) experiments, which continue to have an important impact on the discussion of Basic Income. The first section of the chapter discusses the labour market effects of the NIT experiments of the 1970s; the second section non-labour-market effects; and the third section the difficulty of making an overall assessment of NIT or Basic Income on the basis of experimental findings. The fourth section discusses how the public reaction to the release of NIT experimental findings in the 1970s fell victim to spin and oversimplification, and the final section discusses how later reassessments of these experimental findings avoided many of these problems.