🌱 How a basic income experiment helped these Kenyans weather the Covid-19 crisis

People getting a UBI were less likely to go hungry as Kenya shut down

“UBI lets people start businesses and have more business income,” Tavneet Suri, one of the co-authors of the paper, told me. “As the pandemic comes along, they lose some of that business income. But the businesses stay open; they’re still doing some transactions.” A small business owner, she said, will “expect the income to vary a lot,” and with UBI, they’re “not subject to having to exit if it varies.”

Neat to think of UBI as investment in small businesses. They are able to weather inconsistent income and keep incubating a business.