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A whole 1.3 hours a week or $490 per year at federal minimum wage. Essentially a rounding error. Also worth mentioning it doesn’t say what they were working before so this may simply be a reduction on overtime to take better care of other things such as family, health etc. there’s plenty of things other than finding a “better job” or “being an entrepreneur” that would fall into social or leisure but still reduce things like future healthcare, prison system expenses etc.

From the reason link:

The five researchers who published the paper tracked 1,000 people in Illinois and Texas over three years who were given $1,000 monthly gifts from a nonprofit that funded the study. The average household income for the study's participants was about $29,000 in 2019, so the monthly payments amounted to about a 40 percent increase in their income. Relative to a control group of 2,000 people who received just $50 per month, the participants in the UBI group were less productive and no more likely to pursue better jobs or start businesses, the researchers found. They also reported "no significant effects on investments in human capital" due to the monthly payments. Participants receiving the $1,000 monthly payments saw their income fall by about $1,500 per year (excluding the UBI payments), due to a two percentage point decrease in labor market participation and the fact that participants worked about 1.3 hours less per week than the members of the control group.

Participants in the study generally did not use the extra time to seek new or better jobs—even though younger participants were slightly more likely to pursue additional education. There was no clear indication that the participants in the study were more likely to take the risk of starting a new business, although Vivalt points out that there was a significant uptick in "precursors" to entrepreneurialism. Instead, the largest increases were in categories that the researchers termed social and solo leisure activities.

That article claims the study is from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Let's look into who funds them.

https://winephysicssong.com/2010/09/16/where-does-the-national-bureau-of-economic-research-get-its-money/

Between 1985 and 2001, the organization received $9,963,301 in 73 grants from only four foundations:

John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife)

Smith Richardson Foundation"

All four of these are characterized (by SourceWatch, at least, in their own descriptions linked in the above quote) as very conservative, small-government/low-regulation foundations. Actually they say the Scaife foundation is no longer pushing this ideology since Sarah Mellon Scaife took over, but (I think) during the 1985-2001 period they were. I wouldn't necessarily trust SourceWatch on this (e.g. they say the Olin Foundation gave $20.5 million to "right-wing think tanks" in 2001, then give a list that includes the Brookings Institution. I'm fairly confident this is not a mistake, rather a combination of deadpan humor and a genuinely left-wing viewpoint that does see Brookings as part of the right-wing liberal establishment. But Olin is well known as a conservative foundation, so the characterization of Olin, if not of Brookings, seems reasonable.

Of course, that was from a 2010 article. Let's see who funds them now.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research

Huh. No new information.

In fact, I can't find any new information anywhere.

I wonder why that could be?

Life isn't about working and we've seen how rabid conservatives are to slash and burn disability and unemployment insurance.

This article strongly disagrees with the more scientific studies done here in Canada but even if it's true UBI is a good fucking idea.

There are quite a few studies with the opposite conclusion where there is no change in behavior. One thing that could explain this is a push up to a higher tax bracket for participants vs the control group. A portion of their income falls into a higher marginal tax which is less of an incentive to work. This also does not report on expenses which also might drop. Instead of having to take high interest loans, that extra $12k can avoid cong to take pay day loans to make rent or not pay 15% on a car loan. So while working Indonesia may drop $500/yr, equivalent expenses likely dropped even more.