For decades, governments assumed poor people couldn’t be trusted with unconditional cash. A wave of new evidence says they were wrong.
There is a documented phenomenon in the research literature: drug-related hospitalizations spike measurably in the first days of the month, when government disability and welfare checks land. Among SSI recipients with preexisting addictions, within-hospital mortality rises by roughly 22 percent. The data is real.
So is the leap politicians made from it — and that leap is what’s collapsing.
For decades, the fear that poor people will waste unconditional cash on drugs and alcohol has shaped welfare policy across the Western world. A wave of new evidence suggests the fear was never grounded in the reality most people actually live.
A 2007 study in the Journal of Public Economics tracked California hospital admissions and found a 23 percent spike in drug-related hospitalizations in the first five days of the month, driven almost entirely by SSI and disability check arrivals. Among recipients with preexisting addictions, within-hospital mortality rose by 22 percent. The checks weren’t creating new addicts. They were giving existing ones the means to go further.
Policy Built on a Punchline
In honor of the despicable, low-life, perturbing, hilarious, and unavoidable character from the TV show Shameless, I’m calling this phenomenon “The Frank Gallagher Thesis,” because in the earlier seasons of the hit show, we watch Frank defraud the system by collecting welfare checks from a late aunt before going to the local watering hole to run his tab. Just like some people did in this most recent study around a Vancouver community-based cohort of people who use drugs.
But what’s now collapsing under a pile of new evidence is the leap from the above-discussed conduct among some check receivers to an entire philosophy of governance.
The Frank Gallagher …
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Author: Rolando García / High Times
