A G20 country pays everyone an income at the poverty line

Where things stand (14 Oct 2026)

No G20 country pays all adults a recurring, unconditional cash income at any amount, let alone at the poverty line. None has legislated or budgeted one. To resolve YES, a country would need to pass a law, fund it, and complete a nationwide payment round. Each adult would have to receive at least the official one-adult poverty line, with no upper age limit and no income test. A treasury or benefits agency would then have to confirm the payment.

The current activity is well short of that bar:

• United States. Trump's proposed "Trump Dividend" is a one-off $5,000 per adult, promised only if Republicans win the midterms (PBS, 10 Sep 2026). Earlier promised checks (the "DOGE dividend" and the $2,000 tariff rebate) never went out. The official one-person poverty threshold for 2025 is $16,749 for adults under 65, so even $5,000 a year would be about 30% of the line (Census thresh25.xlsx, checked in the container).
• South Korea. The government's revised 2026–30 Social Security Basic Plan adds a commitment to introduce a "basic income" in response to AI (Seoul Economic Daily editorial, 27 May 2026; Chosun Ilbo, 26 May 2026, which notes there is no funding plan). The only working version is the rural pilot: 150,000 won a month in local currency in selected counties (Chosun, 21 Sep 2026). That is a pilot, it is regional, and it is a small fraction of Korea's poverty line (50% of median disposable income). Lee Jae-myung's approval rating is in the 30s.
• United Kingdom. Prime Minister Burnham has favoured local basic-income pilots, not a national scheme (Big Issue, Jul 2026).
• Elsewhere. Taiwan's NT$10,000 "AI dividend" is outside the G20 and one-off. The Marshall Islands' small universal payment (2025) is outside the G20 and far below its poverty line.
• AI and jobs. There is no sign yet of mass AI job losses: US unemployment was 4.2% in September 2026 (Washington Post, 2 Oct 2026; Harvard Gazette, Sep 2026).

How hard it is: cost of a poverty-line payment to every adult

These are my own rough calculations from published poverty lines, adult population counts and GDP:

• United States: about 14% of GDP.
• Indonesia: about 6.7% of GDP (statistics office line of Rp669,235 per person per month, March 2026).
• South Africa: 9.5–19% of GDP (2026 lower and upper poverty lines of about R1,457 and R2,962 per person per month).
• UK, Germany, France, Japan, Korea and Canada: about 20–30% of GDP. Their poverty lines are relative, so they rise with incomes.
• India and China: only about 3–4% of GDP, because their official lines are old and low. India's Tendulkar line dates from 2011–12, at Rs816 a month rural and Rs1,000 urban (Frontline, Mar 2026). China's line was about 4,000 yuan a year in 2020. Even so, neither government shows any move toward universal cash for all adults. India targets transfers (women, farmers) and provides food in kind. China's leadership is openly hostile to "welfarism." India may not even have a currently adopted official line.
• Saudi Arabia and Australia publish no official line, so they cannot qualify.

Reference class and base rate

No G20 country has ever paid a poverty-line basic income. The national universal payments that have existed (Iran 2010, Mongolia 2010–12, Marshall Islands 2025) were all outside the G20 and below subsistence. Forecasting markets agree: Metaculus's "Universal Basic Income by 2030" (enactment in the US, the UK, China or similar) sits around 2%. Manifold's looser, long-dated markets are higher but use weaker definitions.

Paths to YES

1. Rapid AI disruption (most of the probability). AI would have to cause mass job losses by about 2029, followed by emergency legislation in 2029–30 and payments by 2031. The US line is fixed in real terms, so AI-driven growth would make it cheaper over time. I put roughly 5–10% on that kind of disruption arriving by 2029. Even then, payments set at the poverty line within about two years seem unlikely (perhaps 5–10%), since first steps would more likely be smaller "dividends." That gives about 0.5–1%.
2. Populist programmes in India or China against their low lines: about 0.2–0.4%.
3. Resolver error (for example, counting a one-off or below-line payment): about 0.1–0.2%.

Forecast shape

I set a hazard of 0.03–0.04% per quarter through 2027, because nothing is in the pipeline and legislation plus a first payment takes time. It rises to 0.1–0.12% per quarter in 2030–31 as AI-related risk grows. Compounding these in the container gives about 0.2% by end-2027, 0.7% by end-2029 and 1.5% by end-2031.

Strongest case against this forecast: AI leaders (Musk, Altman, Amodei) openly back universal income, Trump keeps proposing universal checks, and Korea has formally adopted basic income as a goal. A sharp AI shock could move politics quickly. But every concrete proposal is one-off or far below the poverty line, so this keeps the tail above zero without justifying more than 1–2%.

Question. By the last day of each quarter, has any G20 country begun paying all adult citizens or residents an unconditional cash income set at or above its official poverty line for a single adult?

Definitions.

• G20 country: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, or the United States. Membership of the European Union or African Union alone does not qualify a country.
• All adult citizens or residents: nationwide eligibility covering either all adult citizens ordinarily resident in the country, or all adult lawful usual residents regardless of citizenship. Citizens living abroad need not be covered. Adult means the country's general legal age of majority, not a programme-specific higher age. Identity verification, registration, and proof of citizenship or lawful usual residence are permitted; additional minimum years of residence, upper age limits, or exclusions by income, wealth, employment, occupation, student status, disability, incarceration, or household composition are not. Different schemes may together provide coverage, but every adult in the chosen population must have an individual unconditional entitlement at the qualifying level.
• Unconditional cash income: government-funded, non-repayable money available for unrestricted spending, with no means test, earnings phase-out, contribution requirement, work or job-search requirement, or required activity. Ordinary taxation of the payment is permitted; benefit-specific clawbacks based on other income are not. A refundable tax credit counts only if it is payable in cash even with no earnings or tax liability. Payments must recur on a published schedule, at least annually, providing an entitlement for at least twelve months. A one-off grant does not count.
• Official poverty line for a single adult: the monetary threshold for a one-person adult household in the country's primary national poverty measure, published or formally adopted by its national statistical office or national government. Use the general poverty line rather than a separately identified extreme-poverty, food-only, or destitution line where a general line exists. If several general national measures exist without an officially designated primary measure, meeting any one consistently applied measure qualifies. Relative-income poverty lines qualify. An official per-person threshold or an official equivalence scale may be used to obtain the one-adult value; independently invented equivalence scales may not. International poverty lines, minimum wages, living-wage estimates, and benefit eligibility cutoffs do not substitute for a national official poverty line unless formally adopted as that country's national poverty measure.
• At or above: the guaranteed cash entitlement alone, excluding earnings, other conditional benefits, loans, services, and in-kind benefits, equals or exceeds the applicable one-adult line over the same duration. Annualise scheduled payments, not a one-time bonus. Each adult must receive at least the applicable one-adult amount, including adults living with other adults; a household payment may count only if it provides that amount for each adult. Where the official line varies by age or location, each group's entitlement must meet its applicable line. Use the line applicable to the payment period, or the latest officially published line if that period's line is not yet available, including official uprating but no resolver-created inflation adjustment. For a before-tax poverty measure use gross cash; for a disposable-income measure use the cash remaining after taxes and mandatory charges for a single adult with no other income. Actual housing expenditure is not deducted from the payment for this comparison.

Resolves YES if qualifying official publications establish all of the following:

1. A national entitlement and funded payment schedule satisfying these definitions are in force.
2. The government has completed at least one nationwide scheduled payment round at the qualifying rate, rather than merely legislating, budgeting, enrolling recipients, or paying a pilot group.
3. The published benefit schedule and official poverty threshold establish that the minimum entitlement meets the threshold for every adult category in the covered population.

Universal legal eligibility plus official confirmation of a completed national payment round suffices; voluntary non-take-up and individual administrative errors do not defeat YES. An acknowledged geographical or demographic rollout still awaiting payment does not count as nationwide implementation. AI need not be the programme's motivation or funding source.

Resolves NO / Exclusions. Resolve NO at a horizon if the qualifying evidence is absent. Exclude subnational programmes, samples or pilots, targeted minimum-income guarantees, universal pensions covering only older adults, temporary one-off relief payments, and schemes that reach the threshold only by adding recipients' other income. Enactment without payment is insufficient. A country with no qualifying official poverty line cannot qualify until it adopts or publishes one. A later reduction, cancellation, or statistical revision does not reverse an established YES.

Resolving source. Official gazettes and national legislation or regulations establish entitlement; the national finance ministry, treasury, tax authority, benefits administrator, or national audit office must publish confirmation of actual disbursement and the payment schedule. The national statistical office or responsible national ministry must publish or formally adopt the poverty threshold. For example, the US benchmark is the Census Bureau's Poverty Thresholds by Size of Family and Number of Children, one-person age-specific rows, under the Official Poverty Measure, not HHS programme-eligibility guidelines (Census methodology; threshold tables). Official successor series count if they remain national poverty measures. These named government sources, rather than the broader Public confirmation convention A2, control resolution. Apply Resolution date convention A3 and the Resolution window: the decisive publication is the last qualifying official publication needed to establish YES. Earlier statutes and threshold tables may supply background, but payment confirmation must be published within the Resolution window and cover a payment period ending after opening, per the Observation period convention.