Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

From what I understand, two groups of unemployed persons got €560/mo. One group was required to look for work while the other wasn't. And one group was required to report to unemployment offices, and "satisfy bureaucrats".

The results were that the one with unconditional payments had "better mental health".

Apparently they used a "validated five-item mental health screening instrument that identifies people at risk of mood and anxiety disorders", but realistically how much of this is just people prefer money with no strings attached. Seems pretty obvious. I'm sure a lot of things are linked to "poor mental health" like having to go to work, doing chores and basic maintenance to stay alive. Don't really know is this kind of observation has broader implications

I wonder what is the difference between the two groups as far as the rate of finding employment. Might be that the act of looking for a job is stressful.

If the goal is to get people back to work, it might not make sense to optimize just for better mental health.

This makes sense to me.

Having spent a bunch of time with people who have had persistent issues with stable income, a lot of them internalize it at various levels as them personally not being worth anything, because so many systems involved seem to be operating in bad faith.

Anything involving the US medical system, for instance - even as someone working in tech with good health insurance, so many of my interactions with doctors can be summarized as "the doctor makes a snap judgment in the first 30 seconds of interacting with you, and arguing with it results in them interacting in bad faith thereafter".

And that's not as bad as other machinery in the US. The advice I've heard around trying to use the limited social safety machinery in the US is "plan for it to be a fulltime job for multiple years to get on it, and expect to randomly be kicked off it repeatedly".

And having the systems you interact with regularly very clearly act in bad faith, assuming by default you don't deserve things, does things to people's mental health.

These people found out that interacting with the government has a negative effect on your mental health, or that “looking for job is stressful,” and somehow decided to build a narrative around how “socialist welfare is good.”

I think this is interesting, but on its own isn't that compelling. A UBI program that doesn't result in improving employment and education long term sounds both unsustainable and like a moral hazard.

What I think this does underscore the importance of not trying to make the program ensure personal accountability. That means we must find a way to ensure program accountability, and measure long-term results, without burdening the recipients with additional mental health burdens.

Need further breakdown on why those got happier without condition.

It could be IQ, cultural-specific, polarized against authority, much of which deserve monitoring.

I do not think it is a cost-effective way for working population to fund this "freestyle" living unless society gets something from the idles.

Otherwise, like a professor giving out highest grade of a student to rest of the class, that too shall normalizes ...." at the lowesr level.

Here’s the study, I think

https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2025-035.pdf

It would be better if they made it mandatory for everyone to respond to follow-up surveys, as the response rate differed enough to be called out as a study limitation.

One interesting thing to note is that the study didn’t find that basic income support increased the chances of becoming employed, or receiving basic income support reduced crime. I am also not sure how to extrapolate study results from Finnish people to people in other cultures.

Getting free money with no strings attached makes you happy - who would’ve thunk…

> and satisfy bureaucrats

That's an unnecessary quip as that's not the point of checks.

It's not surprising that if unemployed people receive benefits with no strings attached their "mental health" is better since it removes pressure to find a job.

> It was the unconditionality itself—the simple act of trusting people with resources, without surveillance or judgment, without hoops to jump through or forms to fill out—that created these dramatic improvements in psychological well-being.

It not about trusting people with the money they are given.

The usual checks are because people are expected to earn a living by themselves and unemployment benefits are only meant to help them while they can't and are looking for a job. It is not meant to enable a life-style, which is what unconditionality can lead to.

> the conditions we attach to welfare aren’t just bureaucratic inconveniences. They are active harms. They create stress, anxiety, and psychological damage that persists even when the financial support is adequate.

Oh dear... This reads like a parody at that point.

An useful measurement would be to see which group, if any, found a job quicker. A finding that conditionality does not speed things up would be noteworthy and helpful, a finding that people feel better when they get money every month unconditionally isn't.