Current:Home > MarketsThe Universal Basic Income experiment in Kenya-LoTradeCoin
The Universal Basic Income experiment in Kenya
View Date:2024-12-23 20:29:30
There's this fundamental question in economics that has proven really hard to answer: What's a good way to help people out of poverty? The old-school way was to fund programs that would support very particular things, like buying cows for a village, giving people business training, or building schools.
But over the past few decades, there has been a new idea: Could you help people who don't have money by ... just giving them money? We covered this question in a segment of This American Life that originally ran in 2013. Economists who studied the question found that giving people cash had positive effects on recipients' economic and psychological well-being. Maybe they bought a cow that could earn them money each week. Maybe they could replace their grass roofs with metal roofs that didn't need fixing every so often.
The success of just giving people in poverty cash has spawned a whole set of new questions that economists are now trying to answer. Like, if we do just give money, what's the best way to do that? Do you just give it all at once? Or do you dole it out over time? And it turns out... a huge new study on giving cash was just released and it's got a lot of answers.
For more:
- I Was Just Trying To Help - This American Life
- The Charity That Just Gives People Money - Planet Money
- What Happens When You Just Give Money To Poor People? Planet Money
- Short-term Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers to the Poor: Experimental Evidence from Kenya - The Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Results From The City That Just Gave Away Cash - Planet Money
- The Basic Income Experiment - Planet Money
- People can do more with lump sum of money than payments, experiment in Kenya suggests - NPR
- Early findings from the world's largest UBI study - GiveDirectly
This episode is hosted by Dave Blanchard and Amanda Aronczyk. The reporting for the first part of this episode was originally done for This American Life by Jacob Goldstein and David Kestenbaum. Our show today was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.
Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.
Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.
Music: NPR Source Audio - "Race to Nowhere," "Spanish Fruit," and "Spanish Fire"
veryGood! (669)
Related
- Full House Star Dave Coulier Shares Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Diagnosis
- How to deal with your insurance company if a hurricane damages your home
- Let Your Reflection Show You These 17 Secrets About Mulan
- China's economic growth falls to 3% in 2022 but slowly reviving
- See Chris Evans' Wife Alba Baptista Show Her Sweet Support at Red One Premiere
- Thom Browne's win against Adidas is also one for independent designers, he says
- Supreme Court’s Unusual Decision to Hear a Coal Case Could Deal President Biden’s Climate Plans Another Setback
- Ex-staffer sues Fox News and former Trump aide over sexual abuse claims
- Bowl projections: SEC teams joins College Football Playoff field
- Activists See Biden’s Day One Focus on Environmental Justice as a Critical Campaign Promise Kept
Ranking
- Disease could kill most of the ‘ohi‘a forests on Hawaii’s Big Island within 20 years
- Warming Trends: Bugs Get Counted, Meteorologists on Call and Boats That Gather Data in the Hurricane’s Eye
- Inside Clean Energy: A California Utility Announces 770 Megawatts of Battery Storage. That’s a Lot.
- Brody Jenner and Tia Blanco Are Engaged 5 Months After Announcing Pregnancy
- 25 monkeys caught but more still missing after escape from research facility in SC
- Trump’s Interior Department Pressures Employees to Approve Seismic Testing in ANWR
- Florida Power CEO implicated in scandals abruptly steps down
- Family, friends mourn the death of pro surfer Mikala Jones: Legend
Recommendation
-
Beyoncé has released lots of new products. Here's a Beyhive gift guide for the holidays
-
Prince William’s Adorable Photos With His Kids May Take the Crown This Father’s Day
-
This 22-year-old is trying to save us from ChatGPT before it changes writing forever
-
Jennifer Lopez's Sizzling Shirtless Photo of Daddy Ben Affleck Will Have You on the Floor
-
What Just Happened to the Idea of Progress?
-
Ice Dam Bursts Threaten to Increase Sunny Day Floods as Hotter Temperatures Melt Glaciers
-
NPR and 'New York Times' ask judge to unseal documents in Fox defamation case
-
New York’s Right to ‘a Healthful Environment’ Could Be Bad News for Fossil Fuel Interests