Spending Impacts of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend

Alaska is home to the United States’ only long-standing, near-universal cash transfer: the state has paid an annual dividend—known as the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD)—to nearly every resident each fall since 1982. Despite the long history and considerable magnitude of this program—distributing a total of over $51 billion through direct payments—not much is known about its impact on Alaska’s consumer

economy. While prior research largely shows the PFD distribution sparks an increase in consumer spending, here we show how the spending is distributed across the state’s merchant economy. We do

this using daily-aggregated spending data from the Visa payment network for 2015–2022 paired with a simulation-based counterfactual approach, focusing on the first week after PFD distribution. We find that Alaskans increase their spending across nearly all merchant types immediately following payments, with the largest increases at Telecom, Utilities & Insurance, Travel, and Department & Apparel merchants. While spending increases both online and in-person, the increase in online spending is roughly double that of in-store. We also find that the spending impacts are relatively equal across businesses of all sizes. All together, the aggregate spending data demonstrate that Alaska’s annual cash transfer fosters substantial and diverse economic activity.