The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation was launched in 2003 to test the effectiveness of a skills-based relationship education program designed to help low-and modest-income married couples strengthen their relationships and to support more stable and more nurturing home environments and more positive outcomes for parents and their children. The evaluation was led by MDRC with Abt Associates and other partners, and it was sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This paper presents the results of an exploratory analysis that examines whether SHM program impacts vary by six subgroup-defining characteristics.

SHM was a voluntary, yearlong, marriage education program for lower-income, married couples who had children or were expecting a child. The program provided group workshops based on structured curricula; supplemental activities to build on workshop themes; and family support services to address participation barriers, connect families with other services, and reinforce curricular themes. The study’s random assignment design compared outcomes for families who were offered SHM’s services with outcomes for a similar group of families who were not offered SHM’s services but could access other services in the community.

The study’s main impact reports limited subgroup analysis to three potential moderators of impacts 12 months and 30 months after couples entered the study: couples’ level of marital distress, family income-­to-poverty level, and race/ethnicity. This paper explores whether the impacts of the SHM program on marital quality and stability outcomes differ according to six additional subgroup-defining characteris­tics at the 12-and 30-month follow-up points: (1) length of marriage at study entry, (2) experience of abuse or neglect in the family of origin, (3) psychological distress at study entry, (4) whether the extended family respects and values the couple’s marriage, (5) presence of a stepchild in the household, and (6) presence of a young child (under 3) in the household. (author abstract)

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness recently released a fact sheet on preventing and addressing tuberculosis among people experiencing homelessness. According to the authors, ttuberculosis is a serious health concern for people experiencing homelessness and those working with homeless populations. The authors noted that tuberculosis rates are ten times higher for people experiencing homelessness, and of the patients involved in tuberculosis outbreaks investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2010 – 2012, over half did not have a place to call home.

The Brookings Institution recently released an interactive tool that takes a comprehensive look at the state of the job market for America's youth in the nation for each of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Users are able to select a city from the dropdown menu and then view data about the specific employment rates, disconnected youth, race/ethnicity, education levels, and poverty status. Interested users are also able to download this information. The report also includes a number of strategies to reduce youth joblessness and labor force underutilization.

Many TANF staff are unfamiliar with the SSI Program but want to learn more. This brief describes the basic SSI disability determination process and compares and contrasts it with several procedures different TANF agencies use to identify recipients who meet TANF work-limitation criteria in states or localities. It goes on to discuss topics including different strategies TANF agencies use to assess which individuals are most likely to qualify for SSI. (author abstract)

The Departments of Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (DHHS), and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have issued a letter to their respective customers encouraging partnerships among the network of state and local youth service and workforce development providers, human service agencies, and public housing agencies to develop summer jobs programs for needy and at-risk youth that provide employment, educational experiences, and essential skills such as financial literacy and time management.

The Brookings Institution released an interactive map in which users may explore EITC take-up rates at the county level nationwide. Darker colors indicate higher value, while grey shading indicates unavailable data. According to this tool, the southeast part of the country provides the highest EITC take-up rates.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently allocated $120 million in rental assistance to State housing agencies to prevent homelessness and unnecessary institutionalization for people with disabilities. HUD's support of these State agencies is made possible through the Section 811 Project Rental Assistance program, which enables persons with disabilities who earn less than 30 percent of their area's median income to live in integrated mainstream settings.

This brief focuses on the analysis of merged national-level SSI data and TANF data from the 26 states that report to the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) on their full TANF caseload. It found, counter to popular narratives, that the overlap between the two programs was small. It also found that TANF recipients who applied for SSI were not at particularly high risk of losing their TANF benefits. Finally, it found that medical award rates among TANF recipients who applied for SSI were comparable to that of SSI applicants who had not recently received TANF, once important age differences were taken into account. (author abstract)

Child Trends recently released a research brief that identifies and outlines promising approaches to reduce early childbearing among Latino adolescents. This work included a review of research studies, a scan of intervention programs, focus groups with adolescents, and interviews with parents, program designers, and program staff, as well as analyses of national databases. The authors synthesize the results across these various research methods to identify major findings and implications for teen pregnancy prevention efforts for Latinos.

This brief provides an overall summary of the lessons learned from the TANF-SSI Disability Transition Project. It brings together material spread across other documents in a concise format, and it also offers new insights from state-level data analyses that largely back up the conclusions drawn from federal data. (author abstract)