Giving people unconditional aid causes them to work less. That’s the conclusion of a new study that’s breeding increased skepticism of policies that rely on unrestricted cash transfers to reduce poverty. In a carefully conducted randomized controlled trial involving 3,000 participants, the authors find that giving low-income families $12,000 annually reduced the share who work by two percentage points.
The new study is the latest in a line of recent research finding significant employment loss from giving people cash. Earlier this year, a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that lottery winners in the United States reduced […]
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