IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32711.html

Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Guaranteed Income

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Miller
  • Elizabeth Rhodes
  • Alexander W. Bartik
  • David E. Broockman
  • Patrick K. Krause
  • Eva Vivalt

Abstract

We study a randomized trial in which 1,000 low-income U.S. adults age 21 to 40 received $1,000 per month for three years, from November 2020 until October 2023, while 2,000 control participants received $50 monthly over that same period. The transfer produced large but short-lived improvements in stress and food security and increased hospital, emergency department, and dental care use. However, it did not improve self-reported physical health, clinical biomarkers, or mental health after the first year, and we can rule out small effects on many outcomes. We also find no effects on the health of children in participants’ households.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Miller & Elizabeth Rhodes & Alexander W. Bartik & David E. Broockman & Patrick K. Krause & Eva Vivalt, 2024. "Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Guaranteed Income," NBER Working Papers 32711, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32711
    Note: EH PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32711.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gibson, Laura A. & Richterman, Aaron & Randall, Aaliyah & Muruako, Jonathan & Uzwiak, Beth & Fabian, Eva & Thirumurthy, Harsha & Roberto, Christina A., 2026. "Unconditional cash transfers to improve health behaviors among primary care patients: a qualitative sub-study of a randomized clinical trial," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 395(C).
    2. Patrick K. Krause & Elizabeth Rhodes & Sarah Miller & Alexander W. Bartik & David E. Broockman & Eva Vivalt, 2025. "The Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers on Parenting and Children," NBER Working Papers 34040, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Sandra Bohmann & Susann Fiedler & Maximilian Kasy & Jürgen Schupp & Frederik Schwerter, 2025. "Cash Transfers, Mental Health and Agency: Evidence from an RCT in Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2129, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Simonsen, Marianne & Skipper, Lars & Smith, Jeffrey, 2026. "Welfare Reform: Consequences for the Children," IZA Discussion Papers 18739, IZA Network @ LISER.
    5. Amy Finkelstein & Matthew J. Notowidigdo & Steven Shi, 2026. "Trading Goods for Lives: NAFTA’s Mortality Impacts and Implications," Working Papers 2026-33, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    6. repec:ces:ceswps:_11989 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32711. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.