Households in two Kenyan counties were randomly assigned to receive (or not) about US$0.75 per adult per day for 2 or 12 years. Transfers began in 2018.
https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1952
Earnings refers to "total annualized non-transfer income" as mentioned in their pre-analsis plan.
https://www.poverty-action.org/study/effects-universal-basic-income-kenya
Dec 20, 10:49am: Will GiveDirectly Kenya Universal Basic Income experiment find that UBI significantly increased household earnings? → Will the Kenya Universal Basic Income experiment find that UBI significantly increases in household earnings?
Dec 20, 10:50am: Will the Kenya Universal Basic Income experiment find that UBI significantly increases in household earnings? → Will the Kenya Universal Basic Income experiment find that UBI significantly increases earnings?
Here is the relevant outcome from the authors' PAP: "total annualized non-transfer income. This includes (wage) labor income (household survey, section G.1), agricultural income (including the value of any output consumed) (household survey, section G.3), non-agricultural self-employment income (enterprise survey), non-enterprise capital income - return on financial assets (balances in household survey, section C - financial assets, multiplied by standard rates we can look up), interest on casual loans (household survey, section E), and rent (household survey, section C - land and real estate), etc. It does not include transfers from government (household survey, section D), transfers from NGOs (household survey, section D) including those from GiveDirectly, and transfers from other households (household survey, section D). Here and elsewhere, we will value agricultural output when necessary using the median of available local estimates of its price."
Added based on structure of working paper: https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~pniehaus/papers/UBI_main_paper.pdf
If the "Long Term arm" has significantly higher non-transfer income (as defined by the PAP) than the Control group, then the market resolves Yes. Otherwise, the market resolves No.
Note that if the p-value is above .05 on this test, then the results will be considered insignificant and the market will resolve No.
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The authors recently released a paper with results: https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~pniehaus/papers/UBI_main_paper.pdf
I have not read it thoroughly yet but here are the results on non-transfer income:
Since the Long-term arm is the arm that is closest to UBI (continuous transfers over a long period of time), I thought it was natural to compare LT to control. In the table, we see that there is not a significant effect, according to the authors pre-specified definition of statistical significance (p<.05).
Thus, I think I should resolve NO.
Since I did not mention that I would look at the Long term arm or that I would use their first set of results (rather than waiting 12 years until the experiment is fully over) in the original resolution criteria, I am open to arguments that I should alter these criteria to fit the spirit of the question better. Additionally, please feel free to share any relevant information you all find when looking at the paper.
To ensure I can resolve the question in a relatively quick manner, please try to post any comments in the next week.
@DismalScientist Just an fyi you could tag @traders to notify folks if you want their input