Giving the poor a wodge of cash is better than dripping it out
The world’s biggest basic-income trial releases early findings
What happens when you give people free money? The world’s largest basic-income experiment is trying to find out. Since 2018 the American charity GiveDirectly has been sending the equivalent of $22.50 a month to thousands of villagers in western Kenya. On December 1st researchers including Abhijit Banerjee, a Nobel prize-winning economist, presented results from the first two years of the trial.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Free money on trial”
Middle East & Africa December 9th 2023
- Israel is pushing into southern Gaza as the clock ticks down
- Why Yemen’s Houthis are attacking ships in the Red Sea
- Israel is strangling the West Bank’s economy
- Binyamin Netanyahu is at the mercy of his hardline coalition partners
- Giving the poor a wodge of cash is better than dripping it out
- Kenya is belatedly granting citizenship to groups once deemed foreign
From the December 9th 2023 edition
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