A group of 200 black women in three of Georgia’s poorest counties will receive more than $20,000 a piece as part of a “guaranteed income” experiment from the initiative ‘In Her Hands.’ The women, selected at random from applicants in Clay, Randolph and Terrell counties, will receive $20,400 each over two years, in different payment cycles. Recipients must have been impacted by COVID-19 and make less than or equal to 200% of the federal poverty line to be eligible. The program is specifically designed for black women, who have been identified as the demographic that faces the most income inequality and insecurity in the state. With no strings attached, the money can be used for any purpose, and the women will be studied over the two years of the program by researchers interested in the idea of guaranteed income, long a pet project of progressives that has rarely made it past the theoretical stage. But now political eyes from both sides of the aisle will be on southwest Georgia to see how one of the more large-scale guaranteed income experiments in U.S. history will play out.
If you have something from your neck of the woods you’d like to see featured, please send it to phickey@insideradvantage.com
