Can Anti-Poverty Programs Improve Family Functioning and Enhance Children's Well-Being?

We assess the impact on family functioning and child well-being of the New Hope Project, a random-assignment anti-poverty program. New Hope's treatment provides job-search assistance, wage supplements that raise income above the poverty threshold, and subsidies for health insurance and child care. We find that New Hope's effects on employment and income, coupled with its provision of health insurance and child care subsidies, appear to set off a chain of beneficial effects for many participants' families and their children. New Hope parents were less stressed, had fewer worries, and experienced less material hardship (mostly medical) than parents in the control sample. In terms of family process, we find that children in New Hope families spent more time in formal care programs and other structured activities away from home than did children in control families. Among families working full time at baseline and who, on average cut back on their long work weeks, parental warmth and parent-reported monitoring of the child's activities were significantly more positive for program than control families. In terms of child outcomes, we find that teachers reported higher levels of academic achievement and positive social behaviors for boys in the New Hope families as opposed to those in control families. Experimental boys also had higher expectations for advanced education and higher occupational aspirations than did their control counterparts. There were no corresponding program effects for girls. Taken together, results suggests that an anti-poverty program such as New Hope can assist working families to balance work and family pressures in ways that improve parenting and child well-being. Under development. For more information, please e-mail hbos@mdrcsf.org.