Throughout the past decade, the notion that social policy should be applied as a tool to enhance the productive capacity of families, rather than to smooth consumption, has gained considerable traction under the moniker of social investment (SI). Against lingering critiques of the usefulness of SI research, primarily present bivariate, cross-sectional correlations of national-level outcomes to provide what they call a ‘social investment litmus test’. They conclude that SI policies are effective at achieving ‘positive returns in employment and poverty mitigation’. They also present evidence to suggest that ‘passive’ income supports are not effective at reducing poverty and promoting employment. Given the importance of their claims and the pre-eminence of SI in recent social policy literature, we feel compelled to respond and clarify that the authors’ findings do not support their conclusions. In doing so, we (1) review the central claims from the authors’ study, (2) provide evidence as to why the authors’ findings do not support their claims of a ‘social investment litmus test’, and (3) propose a path forward for a more critical assessment of the performance of policies labelled as SI.

在过去的十年中，社会政策应作为提高家庭生产能力而不是平稳消费的工具而应用，这一观念在社会投资（SI）的代名词下已经获得了相当大的关注。反对挥之不去的对SI研究有用性的批评，主要是提出国家水平结果的双变量，横断面相关性，以提供所谓的“社会投资试金石检验”。他们得出结论，SI的政策可以有效地实现“积极的就业回报和减贫”。他们还提供证据表明“被动”收入支持在减轻贫困和促进就业方面没有效果。鉴于他们的主张的重要性以及SI在最近的社会政策文献中的杰出地位，我们感到不得不回答并澄清作者的发现不支持他们的结论。为此，我们（1）审查了作者研究的主要主张；（2）提供了证据，证明了为什么作者的发现不支持他们对“社会投资石蕊试纸”的主张，以及（3）提出了一项建议。对标为SI的政策的绩效进行更为严格的评估的道路。