Iran tried its own basic income scheme — and people didn't give up working

pulse

May 23, 2017 6:54 PM

A new report finds a 2011 cash transfer program yielded no negative results in how many hours people worked each week.

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One of the biggest criticisms of basic income, a system of giving people modest salaries just for being alive, is that it discourages people from working.

A new report on an ongoing cash-transfer program launched in 2011 in Iran may cast some doubt on the claim.

Published by the economists Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooei, the paper finds no evidence to support the idea that people receiving cash transfers take themselves out of the labor force. Some workers even expanded their hours, the report found.

Iran's nationwide cash-transfer policy emerged out of heavy cuts to gas and bread subsidies made by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in late 2010. The monthly transfer amounted to 29% of median household income, or about $1.50 extra per head of household, per day.

(In the US, that would be an extra $

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