Get Off the Family Plan

Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.Universal basic income has been a hot topic for several years. The idea is that everyone should get a guaranteed minimum salary sufficient to live on, regardless of what work they do—or even whether they work at all. Naturally enough, the policy has been much debated, even before evidence on its behavioral effects started to come in—as it now has.The most high-profile recent evidence comes from an experiment funded by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and undertaken by a team of economists at several top universities. In this case, 1,000 low-income people received $1,000 a month with no strings attached for three years. The results were mixed. Compared with a control group, the people who got this amount of money reduced their working hours a bit (as did their spouse or partner), which lowered their household earned income. On average, this monthly subsidy did not encourage its recipients...