What happens when people get a guaranteed income?

Numbers match the citations in the article. A working link isn't proof that a page supports a claim; check the quoted passage and date.

1. 1

   The Employment Effects of a Guaranteed Income: Experimental Evidence from Two U.S. States

   The Quarterly Journal of Economics (Vivalt et al.)Published Jul 1, 2024Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “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.”

2. 2

   The basic income experiment 2017–2018 in Finland: preliminary results

   Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland (Kangas et al.)Published Feb 8, 2019Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “2,000 unemployed people aged 25–58 received €560 a month unconditionally in 2017–2018. In the first year, recipients were no more likely to be employed than the control group, but they reported better wellbeing, less stress and more confidence in their future.”

3. 3

   Basic Income and Labor Supply: Evidence from an RCT in Germany

   Research paper (Bernhard et al.)Published Jun 21, 2025Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “How does basic income (a regular, unconditional, guaranteed cash transfer) impact labor supply? We show that in search models of the labor market with income effects, this impact is theoretically ambiguous: Employment and job durations might increase or decrease, match surplus might be shifted to workers or employers, and worker surplus might be reallocated between wages and job amenities.We thus turn to empirical evidence to study this impact. We conducted a pre-registered RCT in Germany, starting 2021, where recipients received 1200 Euro/month for three years. We draw on both administrative and survey data, and find no extensive margin (employment) response, and no impact on job transitions from either non-employment or employment. We do find a small statistically insignificant intensive margin shift to part-time employment, which implies an excess burden (reduction of government revenues) of ca 7.5% of the transfer. We furthermore observe a small increase of enrollment in training or education. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)”

4. 4

   The COVID Cash Transfer Study: The Impacts of a One‐Time Unconditional Cash Transfer on the Well‐Being of Families Receiving SNAP in Twelve States

   Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (Pilkauskas et al.)Published Feb 1, 2023Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “There is growing interest in the use of unconditional cash transfers as a means to alleviate poverty, yet little is known about the effects of such transfers in the U.S. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled study of a one‐time $1,000 unconditional cash transfer in May 2020 to families with low incomes in 12 U.S. states. The families were receiving, or had recently received, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. We examine the impact of the cash transfer on five pre‐registered outcomes (material hardship, mental health, parenting, child behavior, partner relationships) and several secondary outcomes (hardship avoidance, consumption, employment, benefit use). We find no statistically significant effects (powered to detect effects of 0.09 standard deviations) of the cash transfer on any outcomes for the full sample. In pre‐specified exploratory analyses, we find significant reductions in material hardship (‐0.17 standard deviations) among families with less than $500 of earnings in the previous month, roughly the bottom 50 percent of monthly earnings for the study sample.”

5. 5

   No Strings Attached: The Behavioral Effects of U.S. Unconditional Cash Transfer Programs

   National Bureau of Economic Research (Marinescu)Published Feb 1, 2018Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “The universal basic income has become a widely discussed measure in policy circles around the world.In this review, we cover the evidence relevant to its potential impact in the US, and in developed countries more generally.Many studies find no statistically significant effect of an unconditional cash transfer on the probability of working.In the studies that do find an effect on labor supply, the effect is small: a 10% income increase induced by an unconditional cash transfer decreases labor supply by about 1%.The evidence shows that an unconditional cash transfer can improve health and educational outcomes, and decrease criminality and drug & alcohol use, especially among the most disadvantaged youths.”

6. 6

   The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes

   IZA Journal of Development and Migration (Baird et al.)Published Oct 12, 2018Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “We discuss a range of additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off that can make this intuition misleading in low- and middle-income countries, including missing markets, price effects from conditions attached to transfers, and dynamic and general equilibrium effects. We use this as a lens through which to examine the evidence on the adult labor market impacts of a wide range of cash transfer programs: government transfers, charitable giving and humanitarian transfers, remittances, cash assistance for job search, cash transfers for business start-up, and bundled interventions. Overall, cash transfers that are made without an explicit employment focus (such as conditional and unconditional cash transfers, and remittances) tend to result in little to no change in adult labor. The main exceptions are transfers to the elderly and to some refugees, who reduce work. In contrast, transfers made for job search assistance or business start-up tend to increase adult labor supply and earnings, with the likely main channels being the alleviation of liquidity and risk constraints. JEL Classification O15, J22, I38, H23”