The Employment Effects of a Guaranteed Income

People got $1k/m for three years. Looks like they worked less, no change on quality of employment. Spent more time on mostly leisure. More subjective happiness for the first year, and revert to control groups after.

Pretty much what I expected.

From the paper:

> We study the causal impacts of income on a rich array of employment outcomes, leveraging an experiment in which 1,000 low-income individuals were randomized into receiving $1,000 per month unconditionally for three years, with a control group of 2,000 participants receiving $50/month.

> The transfer caused total individual income excluding the transfers to fall by about $1,900/year relative to the control group and a 4.2 percentage point decrease in labor market participation. 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. Despite asking detailed questions about amenities, we find no impact on quality of employment, and our confidence intervals can rule out even small improvements.

> Treated participants broadly increase expenditures, led by spending on non-durable goods and services, with smaller increases in spending on durable goods and human capital. We observe no significant effects on degree attainment, though the magnitudes of the estimated effects generally appear larger among younger participants.

> Measures of subjective well-being are higher among treated participants in the first year of the transfers but then revert to control group levels. Overall, our results suggest a moderate labor supply effect that does not appear offset by other productive activities.

They knew it was ending in 3 years, right? Seems like it would really influence the long-term planning part of it.

Also they're low income people probably mostly working really hard, of course they need some leisure time. They need a vacation more than most!

I was hoping to see some positive effect on time spent with kids especially young children. That alone would probably pay for a good chunk of it via future educational attainment.