Universal Cash Transfers and Labor Market Outcomes

Authors

• Andrew Bibler
• Mouhcine Guettabi
• Matthew Reimer

Files

Description

One major criticism of universal basic income is that unconditional cash transfers discourage recipients from working. We estimate the causal effects of a universal cash transfer on short-run labor market activity by exploiting the timing and variation of a long-running unconditional and universal transfer: Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend. We find evidence of both a positive labor demand and negative labor supply response to the transfers, document important heterogeneity across workers, and provide a set of placebo tests supporting our main results. Altogether, a $1,000 increase in the per-person disbursement leads to a 0.2% labor market contraction on an annual basis.

Publication Date

4-17-2019

Keywords

universal cash transfer, short run labor market activity

Recommended Citation

Bibler, Andrew; Guettabi, Mouhcine; and Reimer, Matthew, "Universal Cash Transfers and Labor Market Outcomes" (2019). Reports. 246.
https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/uaa_iser_reports/246

Handle

http://hdl.handle.net/11122/11997