United States | Cash for everyone

What the spread of universal basic-income schemes says about America’s safety net

Giving out cash by lottery ought to be a poor way to help people

A homeless man panhandles on Upper Wacker Drive in Chicago on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019. The polar vortex is bringing dangerously low temperatures to a wide swath of the Midwest (Nolis Anderson/The New York Times)Credit: New York Times / Redux / eyevineFor further information please contact eyevinetel: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709e-mail: info@eyevine.comwww.eyevine.com — Started out with nothingImage: Eyevine

Jan 19th 2023|CHICAGO

There were no giant cheques, but the people who filed into a conference room at the Cook County building in downtown Chicago to fill in forms on a snowy morning late last year had nonetheless won the lottery. On December 15th, 3,250 people were paid $500, either on special debit cards or by direct deposit into their bank accounts. They were picked randomly from over 230,000 applicants by GiveDirectly, a charity that has been brought onto administer the county’s universal basic-income scheme.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Winning the lottery”