The first is the investment pathway: Cash gives parents resources they can invest in spending that helps kids, like child care or books, and might let them spend more time with their kids, either by working fewer hours or using money to pay for time-consuming tasks (cooking, say) that detract from time with the kids. I know of relatively few studies of the effect of cash transfers on happiness in rich countries, but in poor countries giving cash seems to increase happiness a modest amount. If big cash transfers reduced homelessness, we’d expect the first two groups to be more likely to have housing after a year than the third group.