Making Direct Cash Payments Work
July 24, 2024
A new study of whether providing people with a guaranteed cash income helps their long-term prospects suggests the answer is yes—with caveats, NPR reports. This promising but uncertain finding aligns with what Jiaying Zhao, Yuen Pau Woo, and Lorne Whitehead observe in Issues. They see providing a basic income as one of several approaches that can help people overcome economic hardship, but note that policymakers lack firm evidence for making choices. To help, the authors call on the federal government to mount an “Apollo-scale research investment that combines basic and applied studies of large-scale interventions to establish better paths forward.”