Resource Library

This report describes how researchers in prevention science and public health partnered with practitioners who deliver youth healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs to translate the concept of co-regulation into action.

This compendium is an effort to understand and document the data collected by ACF that is or could be used for evidence-building purposes. It includes summaries of twelve major ACF administrative data sources and seven surveys. Each entry in the Compendium includes: an overview of the data source; data ownership and funding source; basic content (topical areas covered); major publications, websites, and documentation; available datasets (public and restricted); data quality; statutory and regulatory restrictions on access and use; capacity to link with other data sources; and examples of prior research using linked data... 

Employment and wages have been rising over the last several years of the recovery from the Great Recession that ended in 2009. But the recent wage increases are not enough to offset decades of stagnating or even falling wages for many groups of low-wage U.S. workers. A central policy question is how to ensure that economic growth is shared more widely and that people who work are not poor. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one option...

This brief highlights how six TANF programs around the country pursued organizational change and sought to promote and sustain a positive organizational culture.

Savings and assets play an important role in economic stability and upward mobility for families with low incomes. To help households with low incomes build assets, the federal government launched the Assets for Independence (AFI) program, authorized by Congress in 1998. This program funded individual development accounts (IDAs) that matched personal savings for assets such as a first home, capital to start a business, or higher education and training...

Discover the final report from the Understanding the Value of Centralized Services study describes the advantages, disadvantages, and costs of providing multiple services in a single location to support individuals and families with low incomes.

Updates on behavioral economics and the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project.

Social service organizations and policy makers increasingly recognize that they can accomplish more and improve outcomes for those they serve when they work together with other organizations. They forge new partnerships, develop new relationships, and often implement changes to practice as a result of collaboration and coordination efforts.

Collaboration and coordination efforts occur along a continuum, from early planning stages towards more fully developed or mature levels of partnership...

Home visiting aims to support expectant parents and families with young children by offering them “resources and skills to raise children who are physically, socially, and emotionally healthy and ready to learn” (HRSA, 2019). Although the characteristics of the families served, and the service components delivered, vary by evidence-based home visiting model, problematic substance use is commonly one of the many outcome areas addressed by home visitors in the course of their engagement...

The Compendium of Administrative Data Sources for Self-Sufficiency Research is an effort to describe promising administrative data sources for evaluations of economic and social interventions. The Compendium was created as part of the Assessing Options to Evaluate Long-Term Outcomes Using Administrative Data (LTO) project funded by the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (ACF/OPRE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...