[ef4]

Ah, the classic paternalistic argument. It's deeply appealing to many people's preconceptions. But a growing body of experimental results call it into question.

When you actually conduct the experiment -- a randomized controlled trial where you give some poor people cash and others in-kind services, the cash group outperforms.

[matthewmacleod]

I'd be interested to see any of the research on this, if you have references. I suspect that in practice it's exceptionally hard to draw realistic conclusions from any such research, simply due to the confounding factor of "the wider social structure of the country".

[budu3]

NPR had a brilliant episode where they discussed an experiment where money was given to a control group of people on Kenya. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/11/08/243967328/episode-...

[timr]

For those asking, here are some links that will start you down the path to reading all about said research:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-hap...

http://freakonomics.com/2013/06/04/should-we-all-just-give-c...

http://freakonomics.com/2013/09/26/would-a-big-bucket-of-cas...

http://freakonomics.com/2013/11/27/fighting-poverty-with-act...

http://poverty-action.org/project/0522

I'm glad I could help Google That For You.

[ef4]

Thank you for responding before I could and saving me the link gathering effort.

[kevinskii]

You made a very specific claim:

When you actually conduct the experiment -- a randomized controlled trial where you give some poor people cash and others in-kind services, the cash group outperforms.

None of the above links appear to support it. Please let me know if I'm mistaken, otherwise please do provide a relevant citation. Like many others here, I'm genuinely interested in learning about such a study.

[ef4]

http://econweb.tamu.edu/common/files/workshops/PERC%20Applie...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387813...

[gautambay]

Very interesting (and certainly plausible)! Could you link to any of the experiments?

[tg3]

Here is an article giving high level overview of a few of the experiments: https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money...

[callmeed]

Sources on that?