Cash Transfers in North America: Evidence, Impact, and Future Directions
Common designs and definitions:
Cash Transfers
Cash transfers provide recipients with direct funds, rather than a good or service.
Guaranteed Basic Income
Cash transfer programs that are recurring and unconditional are sometimes called guaranteed basic income (GBI) programs. Many GBI programs are targeted to specific populations, such as low-income families or people experiencing housing instability.
Universal Basic Income
Cash transfer programs that are recurring, unconditional, and universal (e.g., available to all members of a community) are sometimes called universal basic income (UBI) programs.
Conditional vs. Unconditional
Conditional cash transfers refer to programs that:
- Require a participant to complete an activity in order to receive funds (for example, attending school or working a certain number of hours) and/or
- Restrict how funds can be spent (for example, a gift card that can only be spent on certain items)
Unconditional cash transfers refer to programs that:
- Are provided to eligible recipients without needing to complete any specified activities, and/or
- Can be spent at the recipient's own discretion, providing autonomy and decision-making power to the recipient.
One-Time vs. Recurring
Cash transfers can be provided at different intervals. For example, they can be sent as a one-time lump-sum payment, or they can be provided at a recurring interval.
Targeted vs. Universal
Targeted cash transfers are directed to a specific group (for example, low-income people, people experiencing homelessness, new mothers, etc.). Universal cash transfers are available to all members of a broader community.
Direct vs. Indirect
Direct cash transfers are sent right to the beneficiary, whereas indirect payments are sent to a third party on behalf of the beneficiary. For example, some rental assistance programs go directly to the tenant (direct cash transfer), whereas others go to the landlord (indirect cash transfer).
Generating Evidence
J-PAL North America supports evidence generation through funding and technical support.
J-PAL North America Funded projects
Baby's First Years
The Baby’s First Years research project is a randomized evaluation assessing the impact of an unconditional, recurring cash transfer (US$333/month) to mothers with low-incomes on family life and infant and toddlers’ cognitive, emotional, and brain development. See here for a full list of the findings so far.
Grants:
- Ensuring High Quality Assessments in the Baby’s First Years RCT
- Add-on funding: Unconditional Cash and Maternal Bandwidth: A Follow-on of the Baby’s First Years Study of Low-Income Families with Young Children in the U.S.
Evaluation Summaries:
- The Impact of Poverty Reduction on Child Health, Nutrition, and Sleep in the United States
- The Impact of Poverty Reduction Among New Mothers on Child Brain Development in the United States
Blogs and Media:
- Behind the scenes with researchers from the Baby’s First Years study
- Strengthening randomized evaluations with qualitative research: Baby’s First Years mothers' experiences
- Strengthening randomized evaluations with qualitative research: Baby’s First Years household measurement
- Centering parents and parenting in randomized evaluations of cash transfers to families
OpenResearch Unconditional Cash Study
OpenResearch collaborated with two non-profits in Illinois and Texas to randomly assign 3,000 low-income participants to receive either US$50 or US$1,000 per month for three years. See here for a full list of findings so far.
Grants:
Cook County Promise Pilot
3,250 low-to-moderate-income families in Cook County, Illinois received US$500 per month for two years between 2022 and 2024 through the Cook County Promise Pilot. Results forthcoming.
Grants:
Compton Pledge
The Compton Pledge provided 695 low-income households in Compton, California with an average of approximately US$500 per month for two years, allotted at varying frequencies. Learn about the results here.
Grants:
Trust Youth Initiative
The San Francisco Trust Youth Initiative, a Cash Plus model, aims to reduce homelessness and increase housing stability for young adults experiencing homelessness by providing unconditional direct cash transfers coupled with optional supportive services over 24 months. Chapin Hall, in partnership with Larkin Street Youth Services, is evaluating the effectiveness of the model. This model is also being implemented and evaluated at other sites across the country. The evaluation is ongoing.
Grants:
Rapid Rehousing Cash Assistance Program
The Rapid Rehousing Cash Assistance Program (RCAP) is an unconditional cash transfer for people exiting rapid rehousing. The evaluation is assessing the program’s impact on recipients’ housing stability, financial security, health care utilization, and interactions with the criminal justice system. The evaluation is ongoing.
Grants:
Blogs and Media:
Supporting Researchers and Providers to Design High-Quality Evaluations
J-PAL North America provides technical assistance to service providers to embed evaluation practices into their programming and connect them with researchers to run full randomized evaluations of their cash transfer programs. We convene researchers to troubleshoot and generate new ideas for current and future randomized evaluations of cash transfer programs in order to advance this body of research.
BAE Incubator and Community of Practice
In 2021, J-PAL North America launched the Bay Area Evaluation (BAE) Incubator, which focused on implementing and evaluating cash transfer programs in conjunction with other services to assess their impact on homelessness and housing stability. Six leading Bay Area providers participated in trainings to increase their knowledge of rigorous impact evaluations and received technical assistance to design a randomized evaluation of their cash transfer programs. In 2023, we established the BAE Community of Practice to provide partners and researchers conducting ongoing evaluations of cash transfer programs with a place to learn from peers engaged in similar work under a shared mission of reducing homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Learn more about the partners
BAE Incubator partner blog series:
- Evaluating the impact of cash transfers on housing stability
- Compass Family Services on taking education to the next level
- Abode Services on rigorous evaluation and elevating community voices
- Hamilton Families on giving families agency
- Seeking systems-level change to address housing instability
- Beyond the Incubator: Building a community of practice
Convening Researchers
Design Within Reach
J-PAL North America holds bi-annual Design Within Reach Sessions where we convene researchers to trade ideas, discuss various challenges, and receive feedback from peers. In January 2021, J-PAL North America hosted a special Design Within Reach Session focused on randomized evaluations of cash transfers.
2023 Duke Cash Transfers Workshop
In 2023, J-PAL affiliated researcher Lisa Gennetian led a convening of multidisciplinary scholars at Duke University to discuss ongoing and completed cash transfer projects. J-PAL North America supported the convening and summarized considerations, challenges, and future research questions discussed at the event in a blog post.
Synthesizing and Disseminating Existing Evidence on Cash Transfers
J-PAL North America is in the process of synthesizing existing evidence on cash transfer programs and translating the results into clear, actionable lessons to inform policymaking and future research.
Webinar: Understanding the Impacts of Cash Transfers on Health Outcomes
This webinar will bring together the researchers from the Baby’s First Years, Chelsea Eats, and OpenResearch cash transfer studies to understand the connections between study findings, discuss how these results shape our understanding of the health impacts of cash transfer programs, and the actions policymakers can take to apply research insights to their own contexts.
Resources and Future Directions
Areas for future research:
More research is needed to investigate not only simply if cash works, but how, when, and for whom. J-PAL affiliated researchers discuss the challenges of and future of cash transfer research in featured content:
Apply for funding:
J-PAL affiliates and invited researchers are invited to apply for funding for randomized evaluations of cash transfer programs through our Social Policy Research Initiative or our State and Local Innovation Initiative Requests for Proposals.
Connect with Us!
Questions? Please reach out to Laina Sonterblum, [email protected]