November 2025 North America Newsletter
With more than 40 million Americans experiencing a lapse in their SNAP benefits during the first half of this month, many families are struggling to pay for food, utilities, rent, and other costs of living. Unconditional cash transfer programs—sometimes called guaranteed basic income—directly provide recipients with cash to spend at their discretion, and they are becoming an increasingly popular solution to supporting low-income households. These programs may provide economic stability to people experiencing unexpected changes in income or benefits, like the one we saw unfold earlier this month. Since 2017, 150 guaranteed income programs have been launched in the United States. Yet key questions remain about their impact.
I’m excited that J-PAL North America is supporting a range of cash transfer evaluations, investigating their impacts across a variety of outcomes, including child development, financial security, health, housing stability, and more. Understanding how best to design and target these programs—to new low-income mothers, people experiencing homelessness, or other groups experiencing hardship—is especially important to inform policy decisions. Randomized evaluations are uniquely positioned to provide clear answers about what impacts cash programs have, for whom, and under what conditions.
As results from these evaluations emerge, it’s critical to understand how several results taken together can tell a more comprehensive and nuanced story about the impact of cash transfers.We should be mindful not to make overly broad generalizations about whether or not cash transfers “work” from the results of individual evaluations. Lisa Gennetian and Katherine Magnuson—two core Principal Investigators of the Baby’s First Years cash transfer project—explore this idea in a new post on the J-PAL blog, which is featured in this newsletter. In the post, you can also read their reflections on what we can learn about how cash transfers given to mothers affect families, and their interpretation of some mixed preliminary findings.
J-PAL North America looks forward to contributing to the thoughtful synthesis and dissemination of results from cash transfer evaluations and funding additional research that helps answer important outstanding questions. We’ll be sharing more results with you soon. In the meantime, you can learn more about our cash transfers work on our webpage.
Sincerely,
Matt Notowidigdo
Co-Scientific Director, J-PAL North America
What recent findings from the Baby’s First Years study reveals about child poverty and cash’s impacts on family life in the United States
In a new blog post, two core principal investigators on the Baby’s First Years study, J-PAL affiliated researcher Lisa Gennetian (Duke University) and coauthor Katherine Magnuson (University of Wisconsin), discuss what the study teaches us about experiencing poverty during early childhood and the impacts of extra financial resources on family activities. In the J-PAL-funded randomized evaluation, providing mothers an extra $333/month for the first six years of their child’s life increased time and money families spent on children, but did not change the observed quality of mother-child interactions or other measures of family wellbeing. The authors reflect on how they interpret these results and the study’s contributions to an emerging and broader body of literature on cash transfers in the United States. Read the blog »
Supporting early career research staff through J-PAL North America’s Research Staff Training
J-PAL North America works to advance the rigor and scientific value of randomized evaluations across many fields by training the next generation of researchers in using this methodology. In August 2025, J-PAL North America hosted its annual Research Staff Training (RST) for the first time in person since 2019, bringing together research staff from across the globe for hands-on sessions on topics including statistical power, randomization, project management, and data visualization. In a new post on the J-PAL blog, RST participants reflect on their experiences and highlight what they valued most about the training. Read the reflections »
Evidence Matters Convening: Cultivating connections and finding inspiration in King County, WA
This month, J-PAL North America staff traveled to Seattle, WA to host a convening with our Evidence Matters partners at King County, Washington and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. The day-long event at King County—held in conjunction with the annual Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) conference—showcased how leading local governments, researchers, and policymakers are leveraging research and data to inform decisions, improve services, and drive meaningful change. Learn more about our key takeaways from the event »
Featured Evaluation Summary
Understanding which components of homelessness prevention programs improve housing stability for youth and families with children
One out of four people experiencing homelessness on any given night are children or youth between the ages of 18 and 24. Many homelessness prevention programs target individuals at risk of experiencing homelessness by providing case management and financial assistance, but there is a lack of evidence on whether both components are necessary for an effective program. Researchers evaluated the impact of case management and emergency financial assistance compared to only financial assistance on housing stability for youth and families with children in King County, Washington. The evaluation found no significant differences in housing stability outcomes between the two groups. Read the summary »
Featured Research Resource
Navigating hospital Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)
Social scientists seeking to partner with hospitals to conduct research on health care delivery may find it daunting working with a hospital IRB more accustomed to reviewing medical trials. This resource, which is part of our larger Health Care Evaluation Toolkit, provides guidance for how to carefully explain study procedures and impacts on important hospital stakeholders like patients and providers, as well as guidance on how to approach IRB review when a project spans multiple institutions or subject areas.