Basic income was tested on 3,000 people for three years.
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“If you just give people money, they won’t work.” This is one of the most common concerns about basic income. But a recent large-scale basic income experiment in the United States is challenging this common belief. The three-year experiment in Texas and Illinois showed how basic income actually affects people’s lives. The results are complex and interesting, and they are unexpected.
This experiment was conducted by the nonprofit research organization OpenResearch. This experiment was designed to study the impact of basic income on people's lives. Sam Altman is one of the main funders of this experiment. The research was supported by a $14 million donation from Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, as well as the OpenAI Corporation and the Basic Income Fund, which was created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
The essence of the experiment: what was done and how was it done?
Period : 3 years from November 2020 to October 2023
Subjects : 3,000 Americans aged 21-40 (middle and low income)
Method :
$1,000 per month paid to 1,000 experimental group members
2,000 control group members were paid $50 per month
Results that exceeded expectations
1. Work has decreased, but the reasons are interesting.
Working hours have decreased by an average of 1.3 hours per week, and employment rates have also fallen slightly. But this is not simply due to 'laziness'. This is especially true for parents with children and young people under 30, who have invested their reduced working hours in education and childcare.
2. Health Improvement? Complex Results
Item
Growth rate
Dental care
10% increase
Specialist care
6% increase
Consultation with your primary care physician
8% increase
Initially, stress was significantly reduced, but over time, the effect disappeared. In fact, in the third year, the stress level of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group, showing a reversal phenomenon. On the other hand, dental and specialist visits increased.
3. Unexpected positive changes
Increased Entrepreneurship : Entrepreneurship rates increased significantly among recipients, particularly those of color (up 26%) and women (up 15%).
Reduced drinking and drug use : Risky drinking behaviors were reduced by more than 40% among male recipients, and use of illicit painkillers was reduced by 81%.
Savings and residential mobility : Bank savings increased by 25%, and the rate of moving to better housing conditions also increased.
🤔 Think about it : What impact could these positive changes have on society in the long term? In particular, what are the potential effects of increasing entrepreneurship and developing healthy lifestyle habits?
Basic income, isn't it populism?
One of the criticisms of basic income is that it is a populist policy that gives away ‘free money’. But the results of this experiment offer a new perspective on this criticism.
1.
Reduced work motivation? Working hours have been reduced, but that time has been invested in education and childcare, which can have a positive impact on society in the long run.
2.
Financial burden? It certainly requires a lot of financial resources. But considering the effects of stimulating consumption and stabilizing the economy, it could also contribute to long-term economic growth.
3.
Political instrumentalization? These concerns can be minimized through transparent and fair operation.
🤔 Think about it : Is basic income simply “free money” or an investment in social innovation? How should we evaluate the long-term effects of this policy?
Future tasks
This experiment has shown both the potential and the limitations of basic income. More comprehensive community-based experiments are needed in the future, especially to answer the following questions:
What are the long-term impacts of basic income on local economies and job creation?
Why didn't the stress reduction effects last, and is there a way to improve it?
What is the optimal model to maximize the positive effects and minimize the negative impacts of basic income?
Basic income is an experiment that dreams of fundamental social change beyond a simple economic policy. The results of this US experiment show both its potential and its challenges. It is time for us to clearly reveal the true value and limitations of basic income through more in-depth discussion and research.
There was a time when basic income (security income, universal income, etc.) was a hot topic in Korea, and it is still being discussed. There are concerns about the large financial costs and inflation. Regardless of political inclinations, it is clear that basic income is helpful to low-income and marginalized people. However, I think that more in-depth discussion and thought are needed to secure sufficient tax revenue and make implementation meaningful. There is concern that issuing securities that can only be used in certain regions and giving them in the form of points are too naive for such a task that requires a large amount of money. In particular, in the case of Korea, there are side effects that occur when securities such as cultural gift certificates and Happy Money gift certificates fail to play their roles due to the Timon, WeMakePrice, and MergePoint incidents, so there are even more concerns.
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