Ah, $400 or a year’s income as a one-time grant. Pretty cheap to help people in Uganda. Does make the EA case a little since similar research for $1k every month (more than twice as much and not just a one-time grant) shows no such effects in the US.

Just back of the envelope, median household income is $80k in the US so let’s set that to $40k per individual and the census says 34 m in poverty so that’s about $1.2 T in increased transfers (I.e. in addition to current transfers) to mimic this as a universal tactic here. I wonder what happens to constrained resources like housing etc. and what portion of transfers transfer into disposable income if something like this were attempted.