Human Services News

From MDRC:

Based on the simple premise that people who work full time should not be poor, New Hope provided full-time workers with several benefits: an earnings supplement to raise their income above poverty, low-cost health insurance, and subsidized child care.

For those unable to find full-time work, the program offered help in finding a job and referral to a wage-paying community service job when necessary.

New Hope's designers expected that its combination of benefits and services would have the direct effects of increasing parents' employment and income and their use of health insurance and licensed child care.

This report, the final one in a series, summarizes the program's implementation and effects over eight years --- the first three years while the program operated and five years after it had ended.

The findings show that work supports can have a range of positive effects on low-income families and their children.

Adults in the New Hope program were more likely to work than their control group counterparts, and the combination of earnings supplements and the Earned Income Tax Credit also resulted in higher incomes.

New Hope affected children's environments by increasing parents' use of center-based child care --- an effect that persisted through Year 5, or two years after New Hope child care subsidies had ended.

New Hope children reported being more engaged in school than control group children, and their parents were less likely than control group parents to report that their children had repeated a grade, received poor grades, or been placed in special education.

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