Those are my three favorite new plots in the revised paper. Follow for more updates as we continue to put out results about this exciting program.

And here is the full paper: evavivalt.com/wp-content/u... 17/17

But you can check out results from different years in the paper. 16/

Most people pointing to the pandemic seem to think effects would be better afterwards.

If anything, during the pandemic the effects on labor supply were more muted. 15/

Also, some people have wondered about whether results were driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. We can't make conclusive statements here, but it's important to note the majority of the negative labor supply effects only materialized late. 14/

Importantly, if the transfer were of a shorter duration or if we had followed participants for a shorter period of time, we might have come to very different conclusions! 13/

As you can see, the results show a clear time trend, with impacts on employment growing over time until near the end of the program, when the gap starts to close. 12/

3) We previously included quarterly regression results, but we obtained some updated administrative data and made some nicer plots. For example, here is an event study plot looking at employment status. 11/

Yes, there are some negative impacts on labor supply and income excluding the transfers. People also do stuff with that money.

This second new figure helps illustrate the overall effects - and what doesn't move. 10/

2) Zooming out a bit, what can we say about the broader effects of cash transfers?

Some people have focused on the negative effects of cash transfers on labor supply. Others have focused on the consumption the transfers have enabled. 9/

In any case, improving people's subjective well-being over the long term is hard. This isn't necessarily a fault of the intervention - it could be something about human nature or subjective well-being measures. 8/

Many experts expected the transfers - which represent 40% of baseline household income - to make a bigger difference. If participants thought similarly, they might be disappointed.

Treated participants may face unexpected challenges as they make life changes. 7/

But there are other things that could explain it.

For example, it's possible that those receiving the transfers are not doing as well in years 2-3 as they expected. 6/

When I saw these results, my first reaction was that we have good data to be able to pick up this pattern. 5/

This might be surprising, but there is a large literature on "hedonic adaptation" and that could be part of what is happening here. People who win the lottery, for example, often revert to baseline levels of happiness.

Many positive shocks only temporarily improve well-being. 4/

Here, we measure subjective well-being in several different ways: a measure of life satisfaction, an index of satisfaction across several domains, and a measure of "affect balance" (SPANE).

All show the same trend. 3/

Previously, we found similar effects on stress and psychological distress (Miller et al. 2024): declines in stress in year 1 that do not persist. 2/

Evidence for cash transfers is more positive for children is in LMIC countries. But the "it's just one study" framing here is misleading.

Just a note it's not just them. We see pretty similar mixed results on children for three-year $1000/month transfers in the US, albeit not targeted at new moms:

www.nber.org/papers/w34040