Data on what poor people buy when they’re just given cash | Hacker News Reader

Data on what poor people buy when they’re just given cash

qz.com

34 pointskafkaesq20 comments

The "definitive data" is a meta-analysis of economic studies and hidden behind a paywall[1]. The linked article doesn't have any data or charts.

[1] http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/689575

I don't know how controversial it will be to post this here (heavily moderated /r/science on reddit removed a post when I did this some time ago), but enter that URL on Sci-Hub ("The Pirate Bay of science" [0]) and enjoy: http://sci-hub.cc/

About Sci-Hub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

[0] http://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally-uploade...

Here's a super secret non-paywall'd version:

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/617631468001808739...

It's not evident from the short article, but was this a one time payment or monthly allowance? I would imagine that one time or non regular payment would work better than monthly so people don't start to rely on it too much and become lazy.

Where do they teach you to talk like this? What evidence do you have that giving people money makes them lazy?

There's no evidence for what you just said. It's insane that you believe that.

>> This negative result is supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, for both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs.

I wonder if the same results are seen in North America?

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/689575

Anecdotal, but I got to know quite a few of the people where I used to live who were receiving section 8 and other welfare benefits. For pretty much all of them, anything that could be converted or exchanged for some sort of cash, would be. Then it was used for drugs. In one case, a mother with 6 children was due to have heat cut off because she had found a way to divert the money to drugs instead of to pay for heat. The food stamps for food was similarly diverted even though her kids didn't have enough to eat.

So, lets say we provide cash payments to people and they still don't pay for their own basic needs. What then? Are we prepared to say, "too bad you have no heat this winter. I guess you get to be cold."? Where does it end?

Here's an anecdote for you: I was on welfare. Getting cash/foodstamps.. helped me get on my feet, haircuts, toothbrush/paste, gas form my car, parking, job interview shirts, gym membership for showers, and now I'm a software dev making 6 figures. Welfare saved my life.

The thing about anecdotes is they're literally everything that is wrong with the world. Anecdotes prey on dumb peoples emotions. Anecdotes confirm beliefs. Anecdotes confirm stereotypes. We hang out with people who share the anecdotes that support our shared beliefs.

And then we vote people into power who have the same anecdotes and we get persecution...Witch Burning was not based on science, it was based on anecdotes.

My thoughts are if you're not constantly questioning your anecdotes with ACTUAL FUCKING DATA and simultaneously willing to accept that your beliefs are wrong.... well you're a primitive lizard brain person and you're a failure at evolution..tomohawk ...

As a side note...it's weird with the poor we're willing to unquestionably punish the entire group based on the small few that exploit the system but with the rich we just write deceitful people as an exception..see Madoff, Lay, etc.

Anecdotal, but...

The problem with the above is -- it's, well, anecdotal (most likely filtered by the sense of indignance you felt upon hearing that "one case, about a mother with 6 children who...", most likely dredged up by the local tabloids and blasted into the backs of everyone's eyeballs leaving a subjective imprint approximately 1000x its actual statistical significance).

Along with, you know, that (true!) story about the mother with 5 children, a plurality of which managed to "fall in the bathtub and hit their heads real hard" before HHS caught on; or that other true story about the mother with 8 children who fed half of them quite sumptuously, while starving the other half, "to save money."

The whole point being: the study in the article is about real data collected on a reasonably large-scale controlled trial -- not the set of random anecdotes that happen to be sticking to the back of your skull.

So making it harder to convert benefits to cash doesn't work to stop drug use. Making drugs illegal doesn't stop drug use. Why do we care about drug use?

As this is your anecdote, did you make any attempts to protect those children? Maybe give them some food or call Child Protection Services? Or were you just morally outraged that the mother would use drugs?

On the other hand, society seems to have an interest in making sure children do not starve, but I think you would be hard pressed to show society has an interest in subsidizing what amounts to a hobby.

I don't know man. I just did a crappy google search and found that horse breeding as a hobby allows a certain amount of deductions[1]. OH, but undersuit that sounds more like a business. Dude, the IRS considers many factors when deciding if your activity is a business or a hobby.

Most cities subsidize casual sports with public fields and courts.

We have a moral opposition to drugs, not a moral opposition to hobbies.

[1] https://www.hrblock.com/get-answers/taxes/income/hobby-loss-...

Being poor is not equal to being a junkie. Using drugs usually leads to poverty, yes, but many are poor for different reasons.

Sounds like not giving them cash can be abused anyway. So yeah, really seems like not wasting all the administrative costs of micromanaging other people's finances may be the way to go.

well, i'm hardly surprised, give drug addicts money and i assume they'll use it to get more drugs.

however, the article is about people near or below the poverty line, not addicts.

Pretty interesting. I use the money I get for holidays almost exclusively for cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling.

Someone should perform a survey of middle to upper class people and see what they spend free money on. Are they just projecting their insecurities on other people?

A nice summary would be: Hope changes spending habits.

Would this have the same effect if the money was distributed evenly between the sexes? The articles mention of most money going to mothers seems to skew the results such that the title seems hopeful at best, and perhaps disingenuous as written by someone who should know better.

> Regardless of why, the idea that poor people will use any cash they get for cigarettes and alcohol has been laid to waste.

Pretty bold claim.

kind of a misleading title as it doesnt actually say what its spent on, just that it isnt spent on cigs and alcohol as they expected

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