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Saturday, December 9th, 2023

It’s one of the biggest experiments in fighting global poverty. Now the results are in

Author:     Nurith Aizenman
Source:     npr
Publication Date:     DECEMBER 7, 2023 | 9:24 AM ET
 Link: It’s one of the biggest experiments in fighting global poverty. Now the results are in
Stephan:  

Yet another proof that policies that foster wellbeing are cheaper, more effective, nicer to live under, and more productive. Then why don’t we do this regularly? The answer I think is that affluent people mostly don’t like to help poor people. It is basically a kind of nastiness.

Husband and wife Denis and Bentha Otieno at their home in 2017, calculating their monthly budget shortly after they began receiving a monthly grant from the charity GiveDirectly. Researchers are studying whether the grant program — which provides $50 every month over 12 years — can lift people out of poverty.
Credit: Nichole Sobecki for NPR

It’s an unprecedented – and massive – experiment: Since 2017 the U.S.-based charity GiveDirectly has been providing thousands of villagers in Kenya what’s called a “universal basic income” – a cash grant of about $50, delivered every month, with the commitment to keep the payments coming for 12 years. It is a crucial test of what many consider one of the most cutting-edge ideas for alleviating global poverty. This week a team of independent researchers who have been studying the impact released their first results.

Their findings cover the first two years of the effort and compare the outcomes for about 5,000 people who got the monthly payments to nearly 12,000 others in a control group who got no money. […]

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