Jain Family Institute

We are thrilled to announce the first paper from the Maricá Basic Income Evaluation. Authors Sidhya Balakrishnan, Roberta Costa, Johannes Haushofer and Fabio Waltenberg investigate one of the world's largest unconditional cash transfer programs – the Citizen's Basic Income program, in Maricá, Brazil. View the paper National Bureau of Economic Research: https://lnkd.in/gSNsnDnC View the press release: https://lnkd.in/gtK_rdKd Recipient households showed a 9% increase in household income. Consumption rose by 5% at the household level, indicating recipients use some of the increase in income towards consumption. The study finds a reduction of USD 79 reduction of household income when the transfer is not taken into account, driven by reductions in labor income. This suggests that the RBC transfer allowed households to change jobs or stay home, particularly during the pandemic. Broad and unconditional cash programs can provide outsize benefits to the most vulnerable. The study finds that Maricá’s RBC program had a larger positive impact on households headed by women and on households with minors. Maricá’s program may deliver health and education benefits without imposing conditionalities. The study finds suggestive positive impacts on the health and education outcomes of beneficiaries’ children, particularly an increase in hours devoted to school work and doctor visits. A robust cash-transfer infrastructure can be beneficial in times of crisis. Having a well-established structure for granting benefits makes it possible for policymakers to calibrate the size or frequency of benefits, dialing up during extraordinary situations like the pandemic. This paper would have not been possible without the help from a lot of people. We are immensely grateful to Fernando Freitas, Leandro Ferreira and Paul Katz, who were instrumental in making this research project happen. As any researcher can attest, a paper is nothing without the support of research assistants. We are indebted to Ege Aksu, PhD, Marcella Cartledge, Andrea Gama, Jessica Maldonado, Iago Esturi?o Mendes, Sara Restrepo Tamayo and Yunjie (Grace) Xie for outstanding work as RAs.

From JFI's Sidhya Balakrishnan and Ege Aksu, together with Eric Bettinger, Michael Kofoed, Dubravka Ritter, Doug Webber, and Jon Hartley, an exciting new working paper on higher education finance: Navigating Higher Education Insurance: An Experimental Study on Demand and Adverse Selection. "Our results indicate that framing specific terms can increase demand for higher education insurance to potentially address risk for students with varying outcomes." Read the paper at National Bureau of Economic Research - https://lnkd.in/d76RfsnK Read an overview at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia - https://lnkd.in/dmQjbuYP