Massive New Study finds UBI makes Households POORER
California. December 2024. A massive government-funded study of Californians who received “universal basic income” (UBI) finds that the program did little to help poor households. The study was conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
While being given ~$500 per month in free money, participants only ended up $100 richer and smoked more cigarettes.
The study gave about $500 per month to 695 households over two years in Compton, California. Another 1,402 were designated as a control group. The findings: (2/10)
“Receiving guaranteed income had no impact on the labor supply of full-time workers, but part-time workers had a lower labor market participation by 13 percentage points.” (3/10)“
Income (excluding the transfer) was reduced by $333 per month on average relative to control households, and expenditures were reduced by $302 per month.” (4/10)
“At the same time, average non-housing debt balances declined by $2,190 over 18 months relative to the control group, although the drop is not statistically significant.” (5/10)
“We find a significant improvement in housing security, but no overall effects on indices of psychological and financial well-being.” (6/10)
[…]
“The list experiments show strong evidence of relative reductions in IPV, weak evidence of reduced alcohol consumption, and moderately strong evidence of relative increases in tobacco consumption.” (9/10)
