Report

A Distributional Analysis of a National Guaranteed Basic Income – Update

Feb 19, 2025

This report provides an update of PBO’s distributional analysis of a Guaranteed Basic Income.

Highlights

In this update, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) provides fiscal and distributional impacts of the GBI using two different definitions of the family unit, that is the nuclear family and the economic family.
The gross cost of the GBI, excluding behavioural costs, is estimated at $107 billion in 2025 under the nuclear family unit definition. The same cost measure is roughly cut in half to $53 billion when using the broader economic family unit.
The GBI affects household disposable income progressively for both family types. The largest benefit is observed in the lowest income quintile, while higher income quintiles experience a loss in disposable income due to adjustments to the tax system and relatively lower GBI transfers.
At the national level, GBI would reduce poverty rates, as measured by the Market Basket Measure (MBM), by 34% for the nuclear family definition and 40% for the economic family definition in 2025.
The behavioural cost of GBI under the nuclear family definition would amount to $5 billion, compared to $3.6 billion under the economic family definition.