People have promoted giving money to poorer people as a way to improve their lives, including their health. A study examined an experiment in which $1000 a month for three years was given to 1000 low-income people while another 2000 received $50 a month. The results showed a significant but short-lived improvement in measures like stress or food security. Somewhat more money was spent on average per month on health care. But test results and other objective measures showed no actual improvement in either physical or mental health. In general having this pretty significant increase in income did basically nothing to improve health on a wide variety of measures.
The issue here of course is health behaviors. Many low-income people have high levels of irresponsibility, reflected in poor health behaviors–bad diets, little exercise, smoking, substance abuse and so on. And the poor health behaviors are often accompanied by poor health care behaviors. Despite usually having Medicaid coverage, which is very comprehensive and no-cost, many low-income people fail to go to the doctor or comply with other basic health care requirements. If you don’t directly address this, nothing will happen to change those behaviors. (NBER Study)
