---
title: "Basic Income Made Finland’s Citizens Trust Police More"
description: "Participants in Finland's basic income experiment reported more trust in other people, politicians, political parties, courts, and the police."
date: "2019-04-05"
modified: "2019-04-05"
authors:
  - name: "Kristin Houser"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kristin"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/finlands-basic-income-trust-police"
categories:
  - "Finance"
  - "Future Society"
  - "Universal Basic Income"
tags:
  - "basic income"
  - "finland"
  - "society"
  - "the digest"
  - "trust"
---

# Basic Income Made Finland’s Citizens Trust Police More

![Participants in Finland's basic income experiment reported more trust in other people, politicians, political parties, courts, and the police.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/finlands-basic-income-trust-police.png>)
*\<em\>Image: Marta Posemuckel via Pixabay/Tag Hartman-Simkins\</em\>*

## Finns with Benefits

Not only can basic income make people feel better about their finances, but it can also make them feel better about society, according to a new [report](<https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/basic-income-recipients-experienced-less-financial-insecurity>) from Kela, the government agency behind Finland's recently wrapped two-year-long [basic income experiment](<https://futurism.com/study-universal-basic-income-finland-work-less>).

"Respondents who received a basic income had more trust in other people and in societal institutions" than people who didn't receive payments, Kela wrote in the report — a finding that suggests basic income may lead to increased trust in police, politicians, and similar groups.

## Trust the Police

In the report, Kela describes how it surveyed the 2,000 unemployed Finns receiving a no-strings-attached monthly payment, asking them to rate their trust in various entities on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 signifying no trust at all and 10 meaning complete trust.

When they compared these ratings against a control group, they found that the people receiving the payments reported a [higher level of trust](<http://fortune.com/2019/04/04/finland-basic-income-societal-trust/>) in other people, politicians, political parties, courts, and the police.

## Big Picture

The difference in trust between the groups wasn't huge — the basic income group typically rated their trust between .3 and .5 points higher — but it was consistent.

Given that past research has shown that trust is an [essential component of a healthy society](<https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/americas_trust_fall>), this finding suggests that basic income has the potential to not only help individuals thrive, but society as well.

**READ MORE:** [Finland's Universal Basic Income Experiment Just Gave Lawmakers a Really Good Reason to Back the Idea](<http://fortune.com/2019/04/04/finland-basic-income-societal-trust/>) \[*Fortune*\]

**More on basic income:** *[Study: Universal Basic Income Won’t Make People Work Less](<https://futurism.com/study-universal-basic-income-finland-work-less>)*

### Author social links  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinjhouser>)