The Inclusive Economy Lab Pays Tribute to the Experiences of Guaranteed Income Program Participants with PhotoVoice

After the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police in 2020 and the unrest that flared across the globe in response, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Inclusive Economy Lab re-assessed their work.

“We really took that time to reflect on what it is that we are doing here,” Lab Program Director Misuzu Schexnider, (MPP, 2015) recalled. “Does our research really matter? Are we doing anything with our work that makes the world better and helps prevent the kinds of things that we’re seeing in the news every day?”

Spurred on by these questions, IEL researchers committed to include more community engagement in their work from start to finish. They aimed to modify a research approach that’s typically extractive and make sure that it benefits participants throughout the process—beyond the expected presentation of a research paper at the end that all hoped would lead to greater equality and improved lives.

So, when the City of Chicago reached out to the lab to evaluate its guaranteed income project in 2022, Inclusive Economy Lab Senior Research Director Shanta’ Robinson proposed an innovative way to foster that engagement: Ask participants in a Chicago guaranteed income program that the lab is analyzing to photograph and write captions about their experiences.

The result, in part, is PhotoVoice—a traveling exhibit of participants’ artwork that will be on display from Nov. 4 through the second week of January in the Keller Center’s Harris Commons. The exhibit already has been presented at the Harold Washington Library and three city library branches.

“General statistics on guaranteed income’s impact might help convince some people that it is—or isn’t—a beneficial policy for certain groups of people,” said Nour Abdul-Razzak, a Research Director at the lab and a Research Associate at the Harris School of Public Policy. (PhD in Public Policy, 2019) “That evidence is important, but it doesn’t always have much real-world effect. Sometimes you need the storytelling, the narratives, to bring it to life. You need to show the underlying lives that the data points to and highlight the voices of those most impacted by these policies.

“Together, the data and the stories in combination are really powerful when it comes to convincing people,” Abdul-Razzak said.

Apart from that objective, IEL researchers wanted access to this work to be free, in neighborhoods and public spaces, Robinson said.

“We wanted participants to be able to take their friends and families to see these photos and captions and feel the time and energy that went into them,” she added. “Our hope is that when participants see themselves in these photos and captions it’s not only as living their own lives, but contributing to a larger narrative that ultimately inspires research and better policy every day.”

Themes of ‘freedom,’ ‘love,’ and ‘fear’

The guaranteed income program, the Chicago Resilient Communities Pilot, provided $500 a month to 5,000 city residents who had an income less than 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Level and experienced hardships due to COVID. The program ran for one year, from 2022 through 2023.

Surveys taken when prospective recipients were applying for the program showed that their priorities were paying bills, paying off debt, saving money, finding a new place to live and finding a new job or getting a promotion.

Preliminary findings on the study of the Chicago Resilient Communities Pilot are expected in 2025.

PhotoVoice started taking shape shortly after recipients began completing surveys.

Robinson and her team emailed 20 recipients to gauge interest in taking photos and writing captions that would focus on 10 monthly themes—from “freedom,” “joy,” “success,” and “love,” to “fear,” “regret,” “power,” and “closure.”

This specific research—collecting photos and captions from study participants—is rare for the Inclusive Economy Lab and, by extension, the Urban Labs and the Harris School community, Schexnider said.

Thirteen recipients agreed to provide photos and captions and were compensated for their effort. They submitted about 70 photos with captions, which, for the final exhibit, were pared to about 35 images with words.

“As you can tell by some of the photos,” Robinson said, “they really got into the different themes.”

A 32-page catalog on the PhotoVoice exhibit features 30 images with captions. An abandoned grocery store represented worry. A child’s Christmas list demonstrated joy. The last photo of a father before he passed meant love. A flower growing through pavement cracks was freedom.

Documenting his experience was particularly resonant for one recipient, Jeremy, whose last name, like those of other participants, is excluded to protect their confidentiality.

For the theme of regret, Jeremy included a photo taken 10 years earlier of him in a scene from a film. At the time he was attending Columbia College’s film school but did not finish.

Supported by the guaranteed income, Jeremy returned to school and earned his degree.

“Guaranteed income really challenges the narrative of deservedness,” Schexnider said, “and of why we are so hesitant around providing people support. And I think the PhotoVoice project humanizes the policy.”

Cash transfers reduce poverty

Some experts trace the origins of guaranteed income, often called unconditional cash transfers, to Ancient Greece, though the version that most resembles modern guaranteed income programs generally tracks to the 1790’s. Over time, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panther Party were among prominent advocates.

The general, contemporary idea of cash transfers has taken on slightly different forms that include assistance equal to the basic cost of living; a negative income tax that provides government money to low-income people; Earned Income Tax Credit for employed people with incomes below a certain level; and the Child Tax Credit, which reduces taxes for low- and moderate-income families for each child that qualifies for the credit.

In September 2024, an IEL review of existing research on guaranteed income found that more than 120 pilot projects were underway or recently completed in the U.S., and that it was “challenging to draw broad conclusions about the costs and benefits of these programs due to the various ways that pilots are designed.”

Still, the review attempted to synthesize findings. It determined that:

• Unconditional cash transfers likely reduce poverty; recipients appear to use the cash to boost savings and reduce debt.
• Cash transfers cut recipients’ housing burdens, improved housing quality and may enhance participants’ ability to move to a different home.
• Analyses suggesting that unconditional cash transfers adversely affect employment and the labor market and improve educational achievements are limited by issues with the research.
• Although limited, evidence suggesting that cash transfers reduce recipients’ criminal involvement is promising.

The same month that review was released, OpenResearch and their affiliate researchers, with local support from IEL, published initial findings of its study of an unconditional income program with participants in Illinois and Texas who received a guaranteed income of $1,000 a month from 2020 to 2023.

That research showed, among other findings, that recipients’ savings accounts grew, and their mental health improved, although those improvements declined over time. Recipients also had greater interest in starting a business and were more likely to pay for their own housing instead of living with family and friends. In addition, they were more likely to receive dental care, though their physical health showed no improvement.

“Importantly,” the report concluded, “these early findings do not speak to benefits for other members of the household, including children.”

IEL also is studying a Cook County guaranteed income program and the second round of Chicago’s pilot, the Chicago Empowerment Fund.

‘Life of its own’

Tentative plans are being made to exhibit PhotoVoice in the rotunda of the state capitol in Springfield. The 32-page book will be cataloged in the Chicago Public Library system.

In addition, “a few places are jockeying for a permanent exhibit of PhotoVoice,” Robinson said.

“We don’t know where it’s going to live,” she added, “but we know it’s going to live. It’s sort of taken on a life of its own.”