What effects does guaranteed income have on U.S. citizens? (with Eva Vivalt)

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Dec 11, 2024

Eva Vivalt, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, dives deep into guaranteed income and its implications for U.S. citizens. They discuss recent studies on universal basic income (UBI) and its impact on employment, spending habits, and long-term well-being. Vivalt highlights how guaranteed income influences financial stability and even education levels. The conversation also touches on the complexities of evidence-based policy, the role of personal biases in decision-making, and the fascinating intersection of humans and AI in making predictions.

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INSIGHT

Study Design

Eva Vivalt's UBI study gave $1,000/month to 1,000 people for 3 years.
A control group of 2,000 people received $50/month to minimize attrition.

INSIGHT

Minimizing Attrition

Giving the control group a small amount of money helps minimize differential attrition.
This approach yielded impressive response rates (97% midline, 96% endline).

INSIGHT

Randomization's Power

Randomization is crucial for determining causality, not just correlation, in UBI studies. Giving people money and observing outcomes is more insightful than just surveys.

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Read the full transcript here.

What have we learned about UBI from recent, large-scale studies? What factors contribute to differential attrition in (especially long-term) studies? How much does it cost to run large UBI studies? Where else in the world have major UBI studies been run? What's the difference between "guaranteed income" and UBI? How do people in cash transfer studies tend to spend their money? Should restrictions be placed on what people can spend their study money on? How long does it take to see various effects of UBI or guaranteed income on a large scale? How does guaranteed income affect the nature of work in recipients' lives? How does guaranteed income affect a person's net worth in the long run? What are the effects on well-being? How does topical knowledge affect prediction accuracy in a given area? How good are subject-matter experts at making predictions about the outcome or utility of a study? How can such predictions in aggregate be used to shape future research? To what extent should reseachers express uncertainty when making proposals to policy-makers? How much of an effect does the publishing of academic papers have on the world? What kind of person should try to build a career in academia? How can non-experts assess the rigor and significance of academic papers?

Eva Vivalt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. Dr. Vivalt's main research interests are in investigating stumbling blocks to evidence-based policy decisions, including methodological issues, how evidence is interpreted, and the use of forecasting. Dr. Vivalt is also a principal investigator on three guaranteed income RCTs and a co-founder of the Social Science Prediction Platform, a platform to coordinate the collection of forecasts of research results. Find out more about her on her website, evavivalt.com.

Further reading

"The Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers on Consumption and Household Balance Sheets: Experimental Evidence from Two US States", by Alexander W. Bartik, Elizabeth Rhodes, David E. Broockman, Patrick K. Krause, Sarah Miller, and Eva Vivalt

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Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists

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