At best, they showed small cuts in paid labour for some groups, notably mothers with young children and teenagers still at school. In the Canadian Mincome experiment, 'mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating'.

Similarly, the US experiments found that people took the opportunity to better their lives, including studying or a degree and setting themselves up in business. There were double-digit increases in high-school graduation rates in New Jersey, Seattle and Denver. [...]

[...]

Opinion polls in a number of countries have found that when people are asked if they would reduce work and labour if they had a basic income, the overwhelming majority say they would not. However, when asked if other people would reduce work and labour, they tend to say others would. Other people are lazy, but not me! There is also a presumption on the part of critics that people on low incomes will reduce labour and work in response to a basic income, whereas they presume no such thing for richer people. After all, billionaires such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg still work, though they certainly do not need the income!