A body of research is emerging on unconditional cash transfers. What they find is that:
- Cash transfers have positive impacts, including on children.
- Cash transfers have long-term impacts.
- The poor do not systematically abuse cash transfers (e.g. on alcohol).
(...Despite stereotypes that poor households will use cash transfers to buy alcohol, tobacco and other “temptation goods,” studies consistently show no significant impact or a significant negative impact of transfers on such spending. Similarly, most studies find no effect on the number of hours worked. Some studies show increases in working hours as household members migrate to obtain better jobs...)
They are about to conduct a 12 year trial on UBI in Kenya, so we'll have to be patient for those results.
To me, the important thing about all of those trials, however, is that they're funded with voluntary donations, so no one really has to consider hardship being placed on any of the donors. I think it would be a mistake to assume that the findings would be the same if the program were funded through government coercion, since then you would have to weigh offsetting harms to contributors and benefits to recipients.