Even though a UBI is paid to everyone, it helps poor people the most, compressing the income distribution. Alaska proves.

Nonetheless, we do know that, all else equal, a flat dividend payment like this should reduce inequality in the state. Receiving $8,000 in dividend payments increases the income of a family with $20,000 of earnings by 40 percent and the income of a family with $200,000 of earnings by 4 percent. This sort of pattern will compress the distribution of the state’s disposable income under typical inequality measures and, in 2016, Alaska was the most equal state in the country.