In 2023, the United States produced $28 trillion worth of goods and services. The average family had a net worth of $192,900. Shares in American companies accounted for more than half of global-market capitalization. Yet one in eight Americans lived in poverty, as did one in seven children.

The best way we have to help those people is to give them money. Year in and year out, Social Security lifts more than 20 million Americans above the poverty line; tax credits lift 6 million; and food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment insurance, and Supplemental Security Income payments lift another 2 million to 4 million each. Expanding these programs would move the poverty rate lower, experts have long argued. Providing families with much-needed cash also tends to have a range of positive knock-on effects, such as keeping kids in school and improving health measures.

But a new set of cash-transfer programs has had lackluster results. Writing in the new publication The Argument, Kelsey Piper notes that “multiple large, high-quality randomized studies are finding that guaranteed income transfers do not appear to produce sustained improvements in mental health, stress levels, physical health, child development outcomes or employment.” Given the sobering results, politicians and policy makers should hesitate before pumping funds into these safety-net initiatives, she argues.