I've been researching the idea of Unconditional Basic Income since 2013. Here's a list of findings I've compiled from various UBI experiments, unconditional cash transfer studies, and cash dividend research.

The data speaks for itself.

Data: https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index#wiki_that.27s_all_very_well.2C_but_where.27s_the_evidence.3F #basicincome
1) "The design and framing of Mincome led participants to view payments through a pragmatic lens, rather than the moralistic lens through which welfare is viewed… this paper finds that Mincome participation did not produce social stigma."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cars.12091/full #BasicIncome
Although there was a slight decrease in hours worked per year when primary earners were provided a basic income guarantee in the 1970s, that emerged as a result of spending more time between jobs, reasonably looking for a *good* job instead of *any* job.

https://www.academia.edu/1159217/A_failure_to_communicate_What_if_anything_can_we_learn_from_the_negative_income_tax_experiments
When a basic income guarantee was tested in Canada in the 1970s, teen males decided to quit their jobs and go back to finish school. Young women made the same decision and as a result more women under 25 chose education instead of motherhood.

http://www.livableincome.org/rMM-EForget08.pdf #BasicIncome
Not only did fertility rates decrease for women under 25 when provided basic income guarantees, but those of all ages who did become moms were better able to focus on being new parents by using their payments to extend their maternity leaves.

http://www.livableincome.org/rMM-EForget08.pdf #BasicIncome
In UBI experiment after UBI experiment and cash program after cash program, a practically universal result of unconditionally providing money to pregnant women is that their nutrition improves, and as a result their babies are born healthier.

#BasicIncome
Babies born healthier may be the most transformative of all effects of basic income. Epigenetics show that healthier babies will be healthier adults who in turn have healthier babies and low birth weight is correlated to less healthy adults who earn less.

https://www.science20.com/news/correlation_between_birth_weight_adult_weight_and_future_success_study_says
One of the closest examples of a true UBI experiment in the US occurred accidentally and started in 1997 in North Carolina when the Cherokee nation began providing dividends to families years into a study of child poverty. The results?

TRANSFORMED LIVES.

https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf
Another effect of the UBI in North Carolina was decreased alcohol consumption, most likely due to reduced stress. This isn't an outlier. Overall, looking at study after study, cash transfers result in a slight decrease in alcohol consumption.

https://davidevans.blog/2016/11/29/the-poor-dont-use-cash-transfers-on-alcohol-and-tobacco-really/ #basicincome
A review of 53 studies across 14 countries found that cash transfers can be effective in tackling structural determinants of health such as poverty, education, household resilience, child labor, social cohesion, and civic participation.

https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/5/675/4947872 #BasicIncome #SDOH
Basic income recognizes the social determinants of health. What we treat in hospitals is largely the result of people having insufficient incomes and too much economic stress. This is how the Dauphin experiment reduced hospitalization rates by 8.5%.

https://cmajnews.com/2018/08/07/cancellation-of-basic-income-project-a-blow-to-health-research-cmaj-109-5648/ #SDOH
The "Social Security notch" provides further causal evidence of the effect on health of cash transfers. Seniors whose incomes were increased saw "clinically meaningful" improvements in cognitive function that reduce Medicare/Medicaid costs.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w21484  #BasicIncome
Aside from health costs, basic income also reduces the costs of crime. In Namibia's UBI experiment, overall crime rates were reduced by >40%.

How much does crime cost the US? It's been estimated as exceeding $1 trillion per year (6% of GDP).

http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf #BasicIncome
Not only was overall crime cut near in half as a result of the UBI experiment in Namibia, but poaching (aka illegal hunting) was reduced by 95%. Some crimes are done far more out of desperation than others. This seems to indicate that among those is hunting animals to extinction.
A commonly expressed concern about UBI is how it would affect rents, and yet aside from enabling greater geographic mobility from high CoL areas to lower CoL areas, one of the findings from the '70s AIMEs was a surprising increase in home ownership rates. This would reduce rents.
It's the simple choices people make in UBI experiments like eating more fruits & veggies that reveal how a great deal of our existing problems stem from a lack of choices.

Poverty is a poverty of choices created by an imposed lack of access to resources.

https://books.google.com/books?id=XDtOBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=basic+income+fruit+vegetables&source=bl&ots=9ZE8_tySzF&sig=g6ZZs-OVpo6dJXOK-o3UqbFoIYo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq2obKzfDNAhXMQSYKHS1iAOkQ6AEIUTAH#v=onepage&q=basic%20income%20fruit%20vegetables&f=false
Another one of the most common observed effects of unconditional cash is people using it to get out of debt, increase their savings, and to avoid debt in the first place. Because of this, one of the only groups to hate #BasicIncome pilots is moneylenders.

https://medium.com/basic-income/payday-loan-lenders-are-unstoppable-except-with-the-help-of-basic-income-6572bec30210
One of the observed effects of UBI is even increased voter turnouts. Kids raised in below median income households whose incomes were increased by around $7k now vote at higher rates (8-20 percentage points) as adults.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/10/25/a-story-from-this-american-indian-reservation-has-important-lessons-for-americas-voter-turnout-problem/ #BasicIncome #GoVote #ElectionDay
Perhaps the most economically profound effect of unconditional basic income is its effect on the entrepreneurial spirit. New businesses sprout up like never before. There appears to be an innate desire to employ oneself, to create something of one's own.

https://evonomics.com/universal-basic-income-accelerates-innovation-reducing-fear-failure/
After 1000+ homes were destroyed by fire, basic income resulted in a faster recovery. Recipients even ended up with more savings than most Americans have and were thus better prepared for future disasters. Cash was over 2x more helpful than donated items.
http://www.csw.utk.edu/research/economicjustice-housing/west/My%20People%20Fund%20Evaluation-Final%20Report.pdf
Climate change disasters also lead to lowered aspirations among the victims which lead to declines in future-oriented investments & behaviors. On a grand scale this hurts all of us, but basic income has also been shown to vaccinate against such declines.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X17301092
How insufficient income impacts behavior is one of the most important justifications for unconditional basic income. Economic insecurity is like an app running in the background taking up resources. Freeing those resources is similar to boosting IQ 13pts.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976
The most basic effect of basic income is that people spend it. It goes right into local economies & works it's way back to the top before being transferred back down again. UBI is a pump for a circulatory system where each $1 multiplies into more than $1.

https://medium.com/basic-income/trickle-down-economics-must-die-long-live-grow-up-economics-5b8334a0db76
New analysis of the effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)—where our incomes are boosted through the tax system—provides further evidence of just how much sense it makes to invest in each other, and how the ROI can be so great, it is self-funding. https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1064557536790093824
A recent ep of the Basic Income Podcast included another piece of UBI evidence learned form researching sovereign nation dividends, and that's better more reliable transportation, especially in rural areas where public transportation doesn't really exist.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/51OpTqP6R69wzoYJkSsIeM
The closest thing in the world to UBI has existed in Alaska since 1982 where everyone, rich or poor, young or old, receives yearly dividends as their share of AK's wealth. You may think people would work slightly less but instead PT work increased by 17%.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3118343
Another close example to UBI in the real world is Iran's cash transfer program that at one point was providing 96% of the country the same monthly check. The result? No effect on full-time work, but a small increase in self-employment & female-employment.

http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/1090.pdf
For those concerned about UBI just pointlessly leading to rising prices, a new study of 650 villages in East Africa equivalent to 15% of GDP there being distributed directly as cash, is revealing this concern is unsupported by evidence.

https://phenomenalworld.org/guaranteed-income/cash-transfer-knowledge-transfer #BasicIncome
Trust in each other is a fundamental component of a functioning society. The results are still preliminary and await the data from year two of the experiment, but new results from Finland show that basic income increases overall trust within society. https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1093969323683704835
New research out of Alaska reveals that their partial basic income distributed annually as a dividend decreases crime in the two weeks immediately following the distribution. Property crimes decrease by about 8.5% because people have enough resources.

https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/02/12/ask-an-economist-what-does-the-pfd-for-jobs-crime-and-health-in-alaska/
New research out of Alaska reveals very large effects of #BasicIncome on obesity reduction. A $1,000 dividend (1/12 of a $1k/mo UBI) reduces the odds of a child growing up to be obese by 4.5%.

The annual cost of obesity in the US is around $200 billion.

https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/02/12/ask-an-economist-what-does-the-pfd-for-jobs-crime-and-health-in-alaska/
New evidence supports existing evidence that unconditional cash reduces intimate partner violence, both physical & sexual. The effects also spread to the surrounding community to reduce violence in people who didn't even receive it.

UBI cultivates PEACE.

https://twitter.com/jhaushofer/status/1099896999464321024
Based on evidence extracted from 165 studies of cash transfers, providing cash positively impacts monetary poverty; education; health and nutrition; savings, investment and production; with limited evidence for less work or higher birthrates.

https://www.odi.org/publications/10505-cash-transfers-what-does-evidence-say-rigorous-review-impacts-and-role-design-and-implementation #BasicIncome
Some results from the Ontario Basic Income Pilot:

✔️88% had reduced stress & anxiety
✔️73% had reduced depression
✔️45% experienced fewer health problems
✔️17% needed less medication
✔️28% stopped relying on food banks
✔️32% went back to school

👇More👇 https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1102621264039022595
Compared to a control group, the number of women who reported being kicked, dragged, or beaten by their husbands fell by 51% in households where women received unconditional basic income. Incidences of forced sexual acts also declined by as much as 66%.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90315666/how-a-basic-income-could-help-stop-domestic-violence
Using cortisol sampling, @Give_Directly has found that unconditional #basicincome significantly lowers cortisol levels when compared to UBI non-recipients, which suggests a causal effect of poverty & insecurity alleviation on reductions in stress levels.

https://www.mironline.ca/why-universal-basic-income-works-givedirectlys-program-in-rural-kenya/
Lack of sufficient income now shortens life by as much as 15 years between the life expectancy of the bottom 1% and top 1%. The Mothers Pension program (1911-1935) was our first welfare program. Turns out that looking back on it, sons lived 1 year longer.

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.20140529
New evidence in support of universal basic income from Alaska thanks to fresh analysis by @R_Dorsett. The higher the UBI amount, the less property crime occurs, and excluding criminals from UBI has no deterrent effect on crime.

http://richarddorsett.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/AlaskanCrime.pdf #YangGang #BasicIncome
Here is some fascinating new UBI-supporting evidence out of Pakistan. Inequality interacts with cash transfers to increase support for government among recipients and greatly decrease support for government among those excluded.

Universalism > Targeting

http://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/133270/filename/133484.pdf
95% of recipients of unconditional cash in Texas, and 80% in Puerto Rico, preferred it to in-kind benefits after their natural disasters. The cash enabled a much greater meeting of highly diverse needs and also prevented debt and job loss.

https://www.givedirectly.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Why-Not-Cash-Lessons-from-US-Disaster-Projects-GiveDirectly.pdf #ClimateChange
There's huge new evidence for unconditional basic income (UBI) thanks to a new study of Canada's Child Benefit where 1.1 million families start each month with over $600. Returning $71 billion to 67% of families has grown Canada's economy by $139 billion.

https://ubiworks.ca/canada-child-benefit-basic-income-economic-contribution/
In what is among the first ever RCTs to evaluate the macroeconomic effects of cash transfers, a large unconditional cash grant by @Give_Directly equivalent to 15% of GDP increased prices by less than 1%, and grew local economies by almost $3 per every $1.

http://emiguel.econ.berkeley.edu/assets/miguel_research/88/GE-Paper_2019-11-20.pdf
A novel analysis of Brazil's cash transfer program reveals that the income counterintuitively results in people remaining employed for 7-10% longer than non-recipients. Basically the stable source of money helps maintain employment.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0034-76122017000500708&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en #BasicIncome #YangGang
20 African-American mothers were provided a #BasicIncome of $1,000/mo for one year. Here's the results:

âś…More home-cooked meals
âś…Increased HS completion rates
âś…Increased home ownership
âś…Reduced predatory debt
âś…Less worry
âś…More hope

Testimonials:
Canada’s experiment exploring a basic income guarantee in Ontario may have tragically been cut short, but an attempt to salvage at least some knowledge from the pilot has resulted in yet another pile of results in support of the efficacy of basic income. https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1235292174775963656?s=19
Despite what you may have heard to the contrary, Finland's experiment was yet another success, with the final results now finally published.

Days employed: 8%⬆️
Life satisfaction: ⬆️
Mental health: ⬆️
Trust: ⬆️

Summary: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/results-of-the-basic-income-experiment-small-employment-effects-better-perceived-economic-security-and-mental-wellbeing

Video:
Cash to reduce poverty in Indonesia led to a 30% drop in forest loss, even though the income came with no conservation conditions. The effect was larger in villages where more people got income (like UBI), and where the income lasted longer (like UBI).

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/24/eaaz1298.full
Unconditional income has been shown to improve the mental health of those in poverty. Improvements in physical health, such as reduced symptoms of illness and more physical activity, translate into improved mental health, which also improves productivity.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953620304007
New analysis by @DavidCalnitsky + @pilargonalons of Canada's Mincome experiment in the 1970s backs up @AOC's recent assertion that reducing poverty would reduce crime, because that's exactly what happened in Dauphin, Manitoba.

Overall crime dropped 15%.

https://sci-hub.tw/https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/socpro/spaa001/5809598?redirectedFrom=fulltext
By looking at babies born just under and over the weight line that determines eligibility to receive SSI disability income, it's been observed that cash transfers of around $700/mo (avg in 2020 dollars) improves child outcomes and parenting behaviors.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w24913 
It's not new evidence, but a huge new review of the existing evidence finds no evidence of a significant reduction in labor supply with basic income, instead finding evidence that labor supply increases globally among adults, men and women, young and old.

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202008.0638/v1
Because of an ongoing #UBI experiment that started before the pandemic, we now have evidence of what impact UBI would have had if already in place elsewhere. We'd be seeing less food insecurity, less depression, and we would have more hospital capacity.🏥

https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~pniehaus/papers/ubi_covid.pdf
A 2018-19 experiment in Vancouver, BC provided $7500 unconditional cash to 50 homeless people. As a result they spent less time in shelters, saving the shelter system $8100 per person. Drug and alcohol use also went down 39%, plus food security improved.

https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1313941108628520961
A 2018 study of cash giving in Rwanda found that households that got cash instead of standard aid saved 60% more, consumed 32% more, and expanded productive assets by 76% more. Diets improved, and so did children’s height, weight, and chances of survival.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/17/opinion/just-give-poor-people-money/
New research into an ongoing quasi-experiment of #UBI as a result of casino dividends in North Carolina shows it has increased self-reported lifespan for men in the bottom 25% by 15 years, meaning that they're less likely to act as if they will die young.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32432936/ 
The provision of unconditional cash was tested against psychotherapy costing 2.5x as much. The result was that the cash was more effective than the therapy at improving mental health. It was also just as effective as the combination of the two approaches.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w28106 
A new meta-analysis of 38 studies finds that cash transfers improve mental health and subjective well-being, and that unconditional cash has a larger impact than conditional cash. The impact also depends on amount, and primary impact is life satisfaction.

https://www.happierlivesinstitute.org/cash-transfers.html
For those concerned about the universality of UBI and how the rich get it too (despite not being net recipients after taxes) here's some new evidence out of Israel where 14% of recipients of universal cash (mostly those with higher incomes) donated it. https://twitter.com/Ugentilini/status/1347009247826079745
Worried that unconditional basic income will hurt productivity? A new study looked at the impact of increasing cash-on-hand on productivity and found that when people have fewer money concerns they produce more and make fewer mistakes.

Poverty hurts GDP.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w28338 
Stockton ran a 2-year basic income pilot of $500/mo with 125 people. In the 1st year recipients went from 28% employed to 40% employed compared to the control group who went from 32% employed to 37% employed.

White paper: https://www.stocktondemonstration.org/s/SEED_Preliminary-Analysis-SEEDs-First-Year_Final-Report_Individual-Pages-2.pdf

THREAD: https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1367144472115576832
Evidence from the C19 pandemic and government responses to it show that income support saved lives by preventing infection and deaths that otherwise would have occurred.

(More evidence that UBI will function as a vaccine to save lives and improve health)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X21000216
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