• MHLoppy@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    Actual summary:

    • The article’s focus is: lump sum payment vs regular payment.
    • Program had three groups: $20/month for 2 years, $500 lump sum, $20/month for 12 years.
    • Lump sum allowed people to invest (e.g., to start a business) in a way that monthly payments didn’t.
    • Monthly recipients often pooled funds in rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) to provide a lump-sum-like investment ability.
    • Monthly recipients were “generally happier and reported better mental health” than lump sum recipients. Articles quotes speculation of cause to be stress related to investment vs the stability from having monthly payment.
    • “The researchers found no evidence that any of the payments discouraged work or increased purchases of alcohol”.

    While you’re free to circlejerk about how the article shows how great UBI is, that’s not really what it talks about.

    • otp@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The researchers found no evidence that any of the payments discouraged work or increased purchases of alcohol

      I’d say that this is a pretty important finding. This is a common talking point for people against UBI, so finding evidence to the contrary is promising

        • MHLoppy2
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          1 year ago

          I agree it’s a useful insight, but it’s the only sentence in the entire article that isn’t instead discussing the merits of lump sum vs regular payment. Saying that “it’s the takeaway” from the linked article is insanity.

          The Wikipedia page for Hitler includes the sentence:

          The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929.

          That doesn’t make it the takeaway of the article!! If you want to make a case for something, bring the right evidence. As the researchers themselves have said, this study can’t just be generalized to high-income countries.

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Be careful of this conclusion. When a similar pilot project was done for homeless people (in Canada, I believe), the methodology was rigged. They made it so only people they felt would be most likely to give the pilot a positive result were selected. This created an overwhelming bias towards the outcome.

        I’m not sure exactly what the methodology was for this Kenyan project, but I’m hoping that there was no selection bias.