What would a basic income cost in Jamaica?
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Total cost per year
306 billion Jamaican dollars
about 1.93 billion US dollars
2.84 million people × 9,000 Jamaican dollars a month × 12 months
Compared with
- Government expense (central) (2020)30.9%
- Government revenue (central, excl. grants) (2020)31.5%
- Tax revenue (central government) (2020)35.8%
- GDP (nominal) (2025)8.5%
Jamaica in numbers
Jamaica has a population of 2.84 million (2025) and a GDP of 3.61 trillion Jamaican dollars (about 22.7 billion US dollars) in 2025.
Paying everyone 9,000 Jamaican dollars a month would cost 306 billion Jamaican dollars a year (about 1.93 billion US dollars), or 8.5% of GDP. That equals 30.9% of central government expense (2020), 31.5% of its revenue (2020), and 35.8% of its tax revenue (2020).
Children only (under 18: 645,965) would cost 69.8 billion Jamaican dollars a year (1.9% of GDP); adults only (18 and over: 2.19 million), 237 billion Jamaican dollars (6.6%).
Default amount: 9,000 Jamaican dollars a month is the World Bank's international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), converted into Jamaican dollars with the World Bank's PPP conversion factor for household consumption (2025) and rounded to two significant figures. It is a reference point, not a policy proposal; change it above.
How to read this
This is the gross cost: the total paid out. The real net cost depends on which taxes fund it, which benefits or tax breaks it replaces and whether the payment is taxed. The population, budget and GDP figures are not all from the same year (see the sources).
Sources for the figures
- Population
- World Bank: population, total (SP.POP.TOTL), and population by single year of age 0 to 17 (SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN), 2025
- SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN
- Government expense and tax revenue
- World Bank: central government expense, revenue excluding grants and tax revenue, % of GDP (GC.XPN.TOTL.GD.ZS, GC.REV.XGRT.GD.ZS, GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2020
- Default amount
- World Bank: international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), June 2025 update
- World Bank: PPP conversion factor, household final consumption (PA.NUS.PRVT.PP), 2025
- Retrieved from the World Bank API on November 9, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Government figures are central government, as a share of GDP in their own year, applied to the latest GDP.