Renegade Buggies is a free app that can be downloaded from both iTunes and Google Play and helps parents and children gain financial literacy skills together. The app was developed by the National Center for Families Learning in partnership with the Dollar General Literacy Foundation and was named Instructional Game of the Year (2015) by the Institute for Financial Literacy. It encourages both financial literacy and families learning together.

This Abt Associates report details evaluation results from Family Self-Sufficiency programs in Lynn and Cambridge, Massachusetts. In these programs, Compass Working Capital partnered with local public housing agencies to provide case management and an escrow savings account to help participants achieve their financial goals. The researchers compared the change in earnings, welfare income, credit scores, and debt over time between program participants and a matched comparison group. Participants experienced an average gain of $6,305 in household income between 2010 and 2016 and a decline of $496 in annual welfare income. Credit scores also increased an average of 23 points for participants, and their total debt decreased by an average of $764.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) helps increase the benefits of work for low-income individuals, but workers without children can only receive a maximum of $500 a year. This MDRC report includes interim findings from the Paycheck Plus Demonstration in New York City, which tested the idea of expanding the EITC to working single adults without dependent children. The project recruited over 6,000 adults in New York City, and half were randomly selected to receive a Paycheck Plus bonus if they went through the process of applying for it. Interim results showed that individuals who received bonuses had higher income, increased employment, increased payment of child support, and increased tax filing.

This Prosperity Now brief describes how three types of housing organizations have started to integrate financial capability services into their housing programs. Those housing organizations include affordable housing developers, public housing authorities, and housing counseling organizations, and they most frequently offered financial education or one-on-one financial counseling and coaching. Through interviews, the authors found that these housing organizations are started to offer financial capability services either in-house or through partnerships, but they face challenges in implementing those services. Lack of staff capacity, the need for training, and having enough resources available to offer financial capability services are the challenges that housing organizations face. Despite these challenges, housing organizations stated that helping clients proactively address their financial concerns can reduce the need for evictions.

The Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund released the results of an evaluation of a three-year investment in free, one-on-one financial counseling to residents in five cities. This project was based on a model that originated in New York City, in which individuals in financial trouble receive personalized help from a professionally trained counselor through their local government. Bloomberg Philanthropies partnered with Denver, Lansing, Nashville, Philadelphia, and San Antonio to see how they could replicate this model. In each city, the local government implemented the model and contracted with a nonprofit partner to provide counseling services. Over 22,000 individuals received financial counseling, and they were able to achieve positive financial outcomes like opening bank accounts, reducing debt, improving credit, and establishing emergency savings. Each city also found sources of public funding to sustain the program beyond the Bloomberg Philanthropies grant.

The goal of workforce development efforts serving individuals in poverty is to provide them with the skills and credentials they need to increase their earnings in the labor market and advance to self-sufficiency. It is important for workforce stakeholders to understand that low-income families’ household income is often partly comprised of public benefits (such as supports for housing, child care, and health care) that phase out as increases in earnings are made through higher wages and/or more hours on the job. Rapid phaseouts of benefits – what are known as “benefits cliffs” – can have the effect of canceling out large portions of a family’s earnings gains, or even make a family substantially worse off from a self-sufficiency standpoint that prior to its earnings gains. This latest research by the Seattle Jobs Initiative examines the impact of benefits cliffs on low-income Washington families. The goal is to support workforce and social service providers in their efforts to better help these families to navigate the potential loss of benefits as they assist them to make earnings gains.

Almost half of American families are financially insecure, and financial capability programs have the potential to provide solutions. This brief from The Pew Charitable Trusts analyzes four different types of financial capability programs for economically vulnerable Americans: literacy, counseling, coaching, and planning. Each section links to research and program examples of all four types of financial capability programs.

Many American families experience significant shifts in income from one year to the next. These shifts, known as income volatility, make it difficult for families to balance paying expenses and planning for the future. This report from The Pew Charitable Trusts analyzes the differences between families that experienced income volatility and those that did not. The researchers found that more than a third of American families experienced a large year-to-year change in income, but Hispanic families and families without a high school diploma were more likely to experience income volatility.

This report from Brookings discusses the impact of tax refunds—primarily the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Additional Child Tax Credit—on helping families out of poverty. Research indicates that the EITC benefits recipients in a variety of ways, including by increasing adult workforce participation and improving child health. The report includes a link to the recently updated Brookings EITC Interactive, which provides IRS data on the zip code level about where EITC filers live and additional information about the filers. Data like this can help practitioners target their work toward helping eligible families obtain assistance.