Unconditional cash payments have been trialled in many countries, with different amounts, durations and populations. The findings are more consistent than the debate around them suggests.
What the trials show
Recipients spend the money on necessities – food, housing, transport, debt. The feared spending on vices does not appear in the data.
Employment effects are small. Most recipients keep working. Some reduce hours, particularly parents of young children and people in education, which are arguably the intended effects.
Mental health and financial stress improve measurably. That finding replicates across trials.
What the trials cannot show
What happens at scale. A trial pays a few thousand people in an economy where everyone else is not paid. It cannot reveal what happens to prices, wages or labour supply when everyone receives the payment, because those are general equilibrium effects that only appear when the whole system changes.
Long-term behaviour. Trials run for a year or three. Whether people behave differently knowing the payment is permanent is unknown.
The cost question
A meaningful universal payment costs a substantial share of national income. Financing it requires taxes at levels that themselves have economic effects. The trials say nothing about this because they were funded externally.
Why the debate persists
Because the evidence answers the questions it can answer and the disagreement is about the ones it cannot. Whether a permanent, universal, tax-funded payment is desirable is a question about values and macroeconomics that a pilot cannot resolve.
What is likely
Continued trials, targeted programmes for specific groups, and no universal implementation in a large economy for the foreseeable future.