OpenResearch releases public dataset from most comprehensive U.S. study of unconditional cash to date
OpenResearch releases a public-use dataset from its Unconditional Cash Study, the most comprehensive study of unconditional cash in the United States to date. The release turns a rich longitudinal study into a shared resource that can support new questions and research about economic security, family life, work, health, and wellbeing.
Elizabeth Rhodes, Research Director at OpenResearch, said:
“Technology does not decide how prosperity is shared, which problems get solved, or whose lives improve. Those are choices. Research cannot make those choices for society, but it can help us understand what it would take to expand opportunity. We hope that making these data public will enable researchers to explore questions far beyond the ones this study was originally designed to answer.”
View the dataset and find out more
The release of this new dataset has been announced as part of the London School of Economics and Political Science’s 2026 Global Forum for AI and the Social Sciences. To build momentum and unlock new forms of coordinated and collective action, selected organisations from around the world have been invited to use the Global Forum as a platform for releasing work, launching new initiatives, or making commitments related to the Forum's annual focus.
Statement from OpenResearch
As AI reshapes work and expands what researchers can learn from increasingly large and complex sources of behavioural and administrative data, those sources can reveal patterns in human behaviour at extraordinary scale but often lack the context of people’s lives. Understanding how workers and households experience and adapt to disruption requires data gathered over time, directly from the people living through it.
Over several years, participants in the Unconditional Cash Study gave their time and shared detailed information about their lives with the research team. Making this data available to a wider research community and the public extends the value of those contributions.
The randomised controlled trial followed 3,000 participants over three years, with 1,000 receiving $1,000 a month and the remainder receiving $50 a month. Surveys, fielded monthly, built a detailed record of how people navigated income and expense volatility, searched for work, moved between jobs, allocated their time, and experienced changes in their households during a period that included the COVID-19 pandemic, labour market disruption, changes to benefit programmes, and a rising cost of living.
The release pairs privacy-protected survey microdata with searchable documentation that connects variables to their source questions, records construction decisions, and shows when and how measures were collected. The public dataset retains observations at the frequency they were collected rather than aggregating them to the annual level, giving researchers the flexibility to study shorter-run patterns, construct alternative measures, apply new methodologies, and ask entirely new questions.
About OpenResearch
OpenResearch is a nonprofit research organisation that conducts ambitious real-world studies of economic security, opportunity, and technological change. Its work combines rigorous social science with sustained engagement with people navigating economic and social change, and it is committed to making the resulting evidence, data, tools, and research resources broadly available.
About the Global Forum for AI and the Social Sciences
The Global Forum for AI and the Social Sciences is an annual flagship event bringing together leaders across government, industry, academia, and civil society from around the world. Organised by the LSE Data Science Institute, the Global Forum aims to convene international dialogue at the intersection of AI and the social sciences and to mobilise expertise, resources, and partnerships to ensure AI serves human and societal needs.
The inaugural edition of the Global Forum will take place on 16 and 17 September 2026 with a thematic focus on how AI is reshaping work and what governments, firms, and workers must do to prepare for the changes ahead.