Adverse Findings Misstated as Positive in Study of Family Connects Home Visiting Program, Published by Princeton/Brookings
Highlights: We review recent evidence findings for Family Connects, a home visitation program for families with a newborn child, as reported in a recent Future of Children policy brief (Princeton/Brookings). The policy brief notes that Family Connects has been...Evidence-Based Policy “Lite” Won’t Solve U.S. Social Problems: The Case of HHS’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program
Highlights: In this report, we discuss the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program—a federal grant program that, by law, allocates approximately 75 percent of its funds to program approaches (i.e., models) identified...Not all program effects fade: New report on the Project QUEST RCT shows sizable nine-year earnings gains for low-income workers
Highlights: In our last report, we noted that short-term effects of social programs too often fade over time. In this report, we highlight an exceptional case: Newly-reported findings from a well-conducted randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Project QUEST, a...Beware the pitfalls of short-term program effects: They often fade
Highlights: For many social programs, it is important from a policy perspective to know not just whether the program produces positive effects in the short term, but whether the effects endure long enough to constitute a meaningful improvement in participants’ lives....Major federal randomized trial finds disappointing early effects of home visiting for low-income families—but obscures a potentially important silver lining
Highlights: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently reported early findings from a large randomized controlled trial (RCT) of home visiting services for at-risk families with young children. The services included four program types, or...FDR’s call for “bold, persistent experimentation”: An antidote to 40-year stagnation in key areas of social policy (part two in a series)
Highlights: In our previous report, we described 40 years of stagnation in key areas of social policy— e.g., little change in earned income of low/moderate income Americans or in educational achievement of high school students. Given the stagnation’s endurance and...“Government by guesswork” is not solving the nation’s social problems. A fundamentally different—evidence based—approach is needed (part one in a series)
Highlights: In key areas of social policy, the United States has made little progress over many years: (i) The earned income of the bottom 40 percent of the population is almost unchanged since the late 1970s, after adjusting for inflation. (ii) The average reading...Main Findings Misreported in Major Study of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Expansion
Highlights: We review a recent large randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Paycheck Plus program, which tested the effects of expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income, single adults without dependent children. The EITC is a refundable tax credit...Large randomized trial finds disappointing effects for federally-funded programs to facilitate the re-entry of prisoners into the community. A new approach is needed.
Highlights: This report discusses findings from a well-conducted randomized controlled trial (RCT) of program services funded by the Department of Justice’s Second Chance Act (SCA) Adult Demonstration Program, aimed at facilitating the re-entry of prisoners into the...Showing 10 of 40 Reviews