<
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project>
"Ray, a man in his 50s, used to live in an emergency homeless shelter in
Vancouver, Canada. Then he participated in a study that changed his life. He
was able to pay for a place to live and courses to prepare him for his dream
job.
The newly published, peer reviewed
PNAS study, conducted by the charity
Foundations for Social Change in partnership with the University of British
Columbia, was fairly simple. It identified 50 people in the Vancouver area who
had become homeless in the past two years. In spring 2018, it gave them each
one lump sum of $7,500 (in Canadian dollars). And it told them to do whatever
they wanted with the cash.
“At first, I thought it was a little far-fetched — too good to be true,” Ray
said. “I went with one of the program representatives to a bank and we opened
up a bank account for me. Even after the money was there, it took me a week for
it to sink in.”
Over the next year, the study followed up with the recipients periodically,
asking how they were spending the money and what was happening in their lives.
Because they were participating in a randomized controlled trial, their
outcomes were compared to those of a control group: 65 homeless people who
didn’t receive any cash. Both cash recipients and people in the control group
got access to workshops and coaching focused on developing life skills and
plans.
Separately, the research team conducted a survey, asking 1,100 people to
predict how recipients of an unconditional $7,500 transfer would spend the
cash. They predicted that recipients would spend 81 percent more on “temptation
goods” like alcohol, drugs, or tobacco if they were homeless than if they were
not.
The results proved that prediction wrong. The recipients of the cash transfers
did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase
spending on food, clothes, and rent, according to self-reports. What’s more,
they moved into stable housing faster and saved enough money to maintain
financial security over the year of follow-up.
“Counter to really harmful stereotypes, we saw that people made wise financial
choices,” Claire Williams, the CEO of Foundations for Social Change, told me."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-abortion-mexico-vaccine-indonesia-conservation-alaska/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
