You are expecting a lot of a headline, no?

To be fair this has to be one of the stupidest headlines.

What other found would you recommend? Investing in our fellow humans has always been the best investment for any society, if not its sheer definition.

Which fraction of people did it get past temporary hurdles?

Which fraction of people did it give time to work on their problems?

Which fraction of people did it help find stability?

Which fraction of people did it help on mental illness / outlook / comfort / whatever?

Which fraction of people did it move within recommended nutrition baseline?

How difficult is it to come up with more interesting measures than "improved"?

"Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered."

Thank you. Fortunately the study itself looked a little beyond "improved"! This thread was objecting to the stupidity of the headline.

I guess you’re right as another comment mention headline… I did not got it right: I assumed we’re talking about the articled, not only the title. May you point out why your original comment is about the headline and not the topic itself? Me and my English skills will be grateful.

monsecchris wrote "If that’s the best they can say about $750 a month, it sounds like a terrible investment."

Good point that there is no explicit reference to the headline. And yet it was completely clear to me, at first glance, that this was about the headline.

There is a reference. "THAT" refers to the headline's criteria ("improved"). The headline is the closest thing to this "that" - rather than some other part of the article. It's still slim because really the rest of the article is not much further (Good luck LLMs). What clinches it is "that" reference matches logically:

Logically: First this was also my immediate reaction to the headline: it is content-free. "$750/m no questions asked" would improve anyone's life. "improve" is not a useful way to judge this experiment. The headline is absurd. Second: I expected that the study looked at more than that - but only so far - more "hoped" than expected. Third: Then "If THAT's the best they can say" makes sense. It's a quip (short, sarcastic, funny, sadly true) and a realistic one, at the bar that the article editorial crew picked. We often see studies that boast ... but show very marginal results. Is THAT really the best the study got? In fact no, the study measured more (arguably - it's far from bullet proof because of dumb self reporting [did you buy drugs with this? how about with other money?]). They have more of a claim to success. But either the editors were stupid in writing their headline, OR - quite possible - they were sarcastic. Indeed people are aware that it's going to be easy to dismiss the study "It may not be earth-shattering that providing money is going to help meet basic needs" says one of the people involved.

So anyway, "that" was a weak reference. But it had a strong logical match to the headline.