> Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount. Among other categories
of time use, the greatest increase generated by the transfer was in time spent on leisure.
> We observe no significant effects on investments in human capital, though younger participants may pursue more formal education.
Sounds like positive effects, actually.
Effectively, everybody treated the money like a one-off windfall every month that they could unwind if it went away. Yeah, that's smart thinking when you live in poverty.
> In our setting, we observe very limited asset accumulation (on the order of $0 to $2000) and in-creases in debt (of around $1000 to $2000) in the treatment group relative to the control over the course of the study (Bartik et al., 2024). Participants appear to spend approximately the full amount of the transfers each month, on average.
So, basically these people are sufficiently strapped that $1000 per month is insufficient to do much more than handle an extra crisis or two. If you have a child, $1000 will get eaten up immediately--although it probably lets you spend a day or two with a sick kid (that would be 1-2 hours per week, no?) or possibly take them to a doctor when you previously might have gone to work.
In addition, these people know that there is a horizon in which the money will go away--and that horizon might be MUCH sooner if political will changes.
No one is going to rely on that $1000 to go to school for several years when it is going away. No one is going to change their housing situation when the money could go away. No one is going to rely on that $1000 to invest in anything when they have immediate needs.
And all this assumes that $1000 doesn't wipe out some other assistance that they are already getting. The US system is notorious for dropping aid if you suddenly get paid even slightly too much.
It would be more interesting to me to see what giving them a check for $36,000 would do rather than $1,000 per month.
> Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount. Among other categories of time use, the greatest increase generated by the transfer was in time spent on leisure.
> We observe no significant effects on investments in human capital, though younger participants may pursue more formal education.
Sounds like positive effects, actually.
Effectively, everybody treated the money like a one-off windfall every month that they could unwind if it went away. Yeah, that's smart thinking when you live in poverty.
> In our setting, we observe very limited asset accumulation (on the order of $0 to $2000) and in-creases in debt (of around $1000 to $2000) in the treatment group relative to the control over the course of the study (Bartik et al., 2024). Participants appear to spend approximately the full amount of the transfers each month, on average.
So, basically these people are sufficiently strapped that $1000 per month is insufficient to do much more than handle an extra crisis or two. If you have a child, $1000 will get eaten up immediately--although it probably lets you spend a day or two with a sick kid (that would be 1-2 hours per week, no?) or possibly take them to a doctor when you previously might have gone to work.
In addition, these people know that there is a horizon in which the money will go away--and that horizon might be MUCH sooner if political will changes.
No one is going to rely on that $1000 to go to school for several years when it is going away. No one is going to change their housing situation when the money could go away. No one is going to rely on that $1000 to invest in anything when they have immediate needs.
And all this assumes that $1000 doesn't wipe out some other assistance that they are already getting. The US system is notorious for dropping aid if you suddenly get paid even slightly too much.
It would be more interesting to me to see what giving them a check for $36,000 would do rather than $1,000 per month.