The reference chain for the Namibia experiment is an Huffington post article[1] and a report by Bignam[2]. It looks like "Otjivero-Omitara was selected for its

The reference chain for the Namibia experiment is an Huffington post article[1] and a report by Bignam[2]. It looks like "Otjivero-Omitara was selected for its manageable size, accessibility, and poverty situation" (p.19). Ask yourself, could any of those characteristics impact the reduction in crime regardless of UBI? Also, I wasn't able to find a control (or comparison) group for those results. The time series that they provide seem to indicate that there are positive economic trends (see the reduction in poverty reported at page 49) in Namibia during the study's time frame (2007-2009). If these trends are not accounted for (e.g., using a difference-in-differences approach), you risk to conflate outside factors with UBI. Another issue is attrition in the study. Their 40% result only takes in consideration the people who were present in the village for the 2-year study. Now, we could imagine that unemployed people might have migrated out of the village, mechanically pushing crime down thus biasing the UBI results. (see page 56 and 71) The moral of the story is that social research is hard, especially research that wants to be causal. I would be skeptic of all click-baity results unless backed up by strong evidence. [1]: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic-income-wi_b_8354072.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic... [2]: http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b...