
Definitive data on what poor people buy when they’re just given cash - aaronyy
http://qz.com/853651/definitive-data-on-what-poor-people-buy-when-theyre-just-given-cash/
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DrScump
"...studies that surveyed whether respondents reported.."

In other words, in these studies, they gave poor people money and then _asked
them_ what they spent it on, with no objective monitoring of actual spending.
Is anybody surprised that the recipients did _not_ report that they increased
spending on alcohol or tobacco?

This is a definition of "definitive data" with which I was previously
unfamiliar.

~~~
brudgers
When a scientist reports some new finding, the standard is not whether the
government has been objectively monitoring their actual experiment. Instead
the same assumption is in play: most people tend to tell the truth.

Between the two contexts of science and poverty, the social and economic
incentives toward misreporting are objectively higher in the former than the
latter.

