Recommendations and Insights for Guaranteed Income Programs: Mixed-Methods Evidence from the Breathe Guaranteed Income Program

Background: Guaranteed income (GI) programs provide unconditional cash payments on a regular basis to those with limited economic means. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 150 GI programs have been launched in the United States (US). However, these quickly expanding programs have not produced evidence-based recommendations for future GI program design that highlight the first-hand experiences of program participants. The Los Angeles County (LAC) Breathe GI program provided $1,000 per month of unconditional cash to 1,000 individuals for three years and leveraged a randomized control trial design to evaluate its impact alongside 2,000 control participants. The program recently distributed its final GI payment in Summer 2025 and have since gathered qualitative and quantitative evidence to understand participant recommendations for future GI program design.

Purpose: The present study expands the limited evidence on lessons learned from existing GI programs in the US and does so by raising participant voices. Our research questions ask, among a subset of participants in the Breathe GI program who completed qualitative interviews, what recommendations do they express for future GI program design? To what extent do themes emerging from the semi-structured interviews align with or diverge from findings derived from the quantitative survey administered to all treatment participants? What are the implications of these findings and participant recommendations for the design and implementation of future GI programs?

Data and Methods: We leverage an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach with semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 23) in Summer 2025 followed by quantitative survey responses from treatment participants (n = 741) in January 2026 to understand and highlight first-hand experiences and recommendations for future program design among participants in the LAC Breathe GI program. The qualitative data is analyzed utilizing inductive and deductive thematic content approaches and the quantitative data is analyzed via descriptive approaches.

Results: Our preliminary qualitative analysis identified the following five themes on recommendations for GI programs: preserve the autonomy and hope offered by unconditional cash transfers; strengthen financial capability by actively engaging participants in financial literacy resources; expand GI eligibility criteria and increase programming; increase the awareness and visibility of GI programs; and address administrative and delivery barriers to GI cash transfers. Preliminary quantitative analyses corroborate some of these qualitative findings and provide additional insight: the majority of GI recipients (53%) agreed that GI programs should make financial education classes available on a voluntary basis; the large majority of participants (57%) agreed that participants should be provided with optional opportunities to save some of their GI payments; and half (50%) of GI recipients prefer to receive their payment on the first week of the month.

Conclusions: Together, these findings shed light on participant recommendations for future GI program design. By highlighting participant voices on their experiences receiving the cash, the present study illuminates what worked well and what could be improved to best serve future GI recipients. The implications of this study are insightful for ongoing and future GI program development efforts, allowing GI programs to incorporate evidence-base lessons learned from prior initiatives.