Capturing a clear picture of Americans’ financial lives involves looking at not only financial metrics but also the circumstances that shape people’s everyday lives, such as access to health care and affordable childcare. However, creating this holistic understanding can be difficult. Researchers and local officials must navigate a fragmented data landscape, which makes it challenging to understand people’s financial lives, much less develop solutions to improve them.

The Urban Institute’s Financial Well-Being Data Hub developed a tool to address the challenge by allowing users to browse financial well-being metrics across publicly available datasets. The tool’s more than 300 metrics include core measures of financial well-being, such as the value of household assets and debts, and contextual factors that shape people’s financial lives, such as disruptions due to climate-driven events. Users can filter metrics by data source, geography, and topic.

The Survey of Household Economics and Decision-making is the survey from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for tracking the financial circumstances of low- and moderate-income families and potential risks to their financial health. This year’s survey continues to track key topics related to financial outcomes, such as the effects of inflation on household finances, emergency savings, housing, returns to education, and retirement. New topics have been added on food sufficiency, caregiving, employment of those with a previous arrest or conviction, and homeowners’ insurance.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors will be hosting a virtual event on June 20, 2024 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, where researchers will share findings from the survey on trends in financial well-being and answer any questions on the financial conditions among low- and moderate-income populations based on the survey results.

Qualitative data indicate guaranteed income programs—which provide cash directly to beneficiaries—provide real stability to people in need. But, while waiting for the quantitative data to come in, researchers are brainstorming on how to maximize this approach. This Abt podcast episode discusses two outstanding questions that researchers have: What do we still have to learn about cash transfers as a means of empowering people, and can making payments directly to households be a more effective way of providing rent subsidies?

Individuals can better meet economic challenges with higher wages, expanded employment opportunities, knowledge of financial concepts, and access to affordable and safe financial products and services. To help support the financial well-being of people with low incomes, government agencies fund both employment and training (E&T) programs and financial capability interventions. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation research brief describes the experiences of individuals with low incomes who participated in programs that integrate E&T and financial capability services. The brief is intended for E&T program administrators, client-facing staff, and financial capability service providers seeking to learn more about the successes and challenges of delivering integrated services from the perspective of participants. By incorporating these insights into service delivery, practitioners can improve program structures, strengthen engagement, and enhance supports to foster financial well-being for individuals with low incomes.

Workforce Communities of Inquiry (WCI) is a flexible, replicable model that provides workforce development practitioners with the training, tools, and support needed to engage in community-driven research. The asset-based approach is designed to uncover specific behaviors, practices, and solutions that improve outcomes for a specific population or geography. Conversations held during the WCI pilot provides a better understanding of how occupational segregation is occurring across the Deep South and its impact on Black communities. The research also identifies immediate actions workforce organizations can take to improve the outcomes of Black learners and workers who utilize the public workforce system. This Jobs for the Future resource highlights key research insights and conversational themes that emerged during the pilot.

The Urban Institute and the Berkeley Opportunity Lab are co-hosting a webinar on May 23, 2024 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET where presenters will explore the impacts of providing cash assistance to low-income families with children, including the impact of cash assistance on investments on early childhood outcomes, reductions in child maltreatment, and long-term employment and educational outcomes of children. There will be discussions on how policymakers and researchers can leverage these insights to improve the well-being of some of the nation’s most vulnerable children.

The YouthNPower: Transforming Care Collective launched the first direct cash transfer (DCT) pilot for youth transitioning from foster care in 2023 and designed with young people who have lived expertise in the child welfare system. This New York City pilot is part of a larger research and advocacy project to document the impact of unconditional cash support for young adults who have recently left the child welfare system to learn more about the conditions facing young people as they navigate life after foster care, and to advocate for policy and program changes that will enrich their lives and help them thrive. This Center for the Study of Social Policy recording highlights a panel that shared:

• An introduction to the intergenerational YouthNPower collective and its approach combining research, advocacy, and organizing;
• Information about the Direct Cash Transfer pilot design; and
• Preliminary findings of the pilot’s Participatory Action Research.

People with low incomes may face various challenges to improving their financial situations. Employment and training (E&T) and financial capability services can help improve people's financial circumstances by providing them with useful skills, knowledge, and access to resources and opportunities. The Integrating Financial Capability and Employment Services (InFin) study, funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), was designed to learn about ways in which organizations provide E&T and financial capability services in an integrated manner. This OPRE report summarizes the study’s key findings about the approaches that organizations use to integrate these services, their motivations for doing so, details on the types of financial capability services involved, and participant perspectives on integrated services. It also discusses considerations for future research on the effectiveness of integrated models.

The U.S. Congress temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide economic assistance for families with children. Between July and December 2021, CTC increased the amount of money they provided per child and the eligibility criteria was expanded to reach more economically disadvantaged families. Using data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey and a quasi-experimental study design, this Health Affairs article examines the effects of the expanded CTC on mental health and related outcomes among low-income adults with children, and by racial and ethnic subgroup.