Some of the strongest evidence on unconditional cash comes not from rich countries but from poor ones, where a modest sum is a large share of household income and its effects are easier to measure.
Cash in Kenya
The charity GiveDirectly has made unconditional transfers to poor households in East Africa since 2009. An early study by Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro, published in 2016, found that recipients in Kenya spent more on food and livestock, bought durable assets such as metal roofs, and reported less stress, with no rise in spending on alcohol or tobacco. That last finding recurs across many countries: reviews of cash transfer programs find they do not increase spending on alcohol and tobacco, contrary to a widespread fear.
A later study looked at the wider local economy. Economists including Dennis Egger, Johannes Haushofer, Edward Miguel, Paul Niehaus and Michael Walker followed large one-time transfers in rural Kenya, worth roughly 15 percent of local economic output. Published in 2022, the study found that the transfers raised local economic activity by about 2.5 dollars for each dollar given, with very little inflation, around 0.1 percent. Neighbors who received no cash benefited too, through higher sales and earnings. Much of the gain came because local firms had idle capacity, so they could sell more without raising prices, which may not hold in a fully employed rich economy.
The most ambitious test is a basic income study that GiveDirectly launched in Kenya in 2017 and 2018, in which whole villages were paid. Some villages receive about 75 US cents a day per adult for twelve years, others the same for two years, and others an equal total as a lump sum. Early results reported in 2023 by Abhijit Banerjee, Tavneet Suri and colleagues found no fall in work. Recipients in the Kenyan basic income study shifted from wage labor toward running their own businesses, and the lump sum produced the largest gains in enterprise. The long-term arm, still running, will offer the first evidence on a payment people can count on for over a decade.
Namibia and India
In 2008 a coalition of churches, unions and charities paid 100 Namibian dollars a month to every resident under 60 in the settlement of Otjivero-Omitara for two years. Its report claimed falls in child malnutrition and school dropouts and a rise in small businesses. Critics noted that the Namibian pilot had no control group and was run and evaluated by its advocates, while newcomers moving into the area complicated the results.
From 2011 to 2013 the Self-Employed Women's Association, with UNICEF funding, ran pilots in villages in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, paying every man, woman and child a small monthly sum and comparing them with similar villages. The Madhya Pradesh pilots reported better nutrition, more school attendance and more own-account work. Women in particular reported more say in household decisions. As with several pilots, the researchers were also supporters of the policy, so independent replication matters.
Iran's near-universal transfer
The largest program resembling a basic income came from an unexpected source. In 2010 Iran replaced subsidies on fuel and bread with monthly cash transfers to almost all households, worth at first about 40 dollars per person, close to 29 percent of median household income. The economists Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Mohammad Mostafavi-Dehzooei later found no evidence that the transfers reduced work; some service workers even worked slightly more. High inflation later eroded the payments' value, a reminder that a fixed sum shrinks unless it is tied to prices.
Europe
Finland's two-year trial of 2017 and 2018 paid 2,000 randomly chosen unemployed people 560 euros a month; employment barely changed, while wellbeing improved. In Germany, the nonprofit Mein Grundeinkommen and the DIW economic research institute paid 122 people 1,200 euros a month for three years from 2021, alongside a larger control group. The German study, reported in 2025, found recipients did not reduce their working hours, while their mental health and sense of purpose improved and many saved or gave more. In 2022 Wales began paying young people leaving state care a monthly income for two years, a small, targeted test whose results are still being studied.
Worked example: does one pilot prove the case?
A campaigner cites the Namibian pilot as proof that basic income ends child hunger. A skeptic replies that a single settlement of about 1,000 people, with no control group and run by supporters, proves little. Both have a point. A useful habit is to weigh studies by design. Randomized trials with large samples, independent researchers and published methods, like the Kenyan studies, count for more; a single striking result counts for less until it is repeated.
Across the strongest studies a fairly steady picture emerges: cash is not wasted, work falls little if at all, and wellbeing improves. What remains unknown is how a permanent, universal payment funded by real taxes would behave in a rich country, because no one has yet tried one.