Wilmington, Delaware
Report Publish Date: April 18, 2024
This journal article investigates whether providing cash transfers—in other words, giving money—to 14- to 17-year-old boys in Wilmington, Delaware, could help them avoid gun violence, a big problem and cause of death for teens in their city.
Teen boys who got cash and did not attend the after-school program increased healthy behaviors such as not drinking alcohol, using marijuana or prescription drugs, getting into a fight, carrying a weapon, or vaping.
Teens who got cash in return for attending the after-school program increased their financial literacy, something that was taught in the program. Many of the teens said they only attended because their parents made them, which suggests teens with more support at home may be more likely to attend programs such as this one.
Cash transfers have been used in many parts of the world to try to improve health, economic, and other outcomes for people who live in places with high poverty and violence. But this type of intervention can be politically unpopular, the authors write, because of beliefs framing poverty as “a moral failing rather than a societal one.” To boost support for cash transfers, proponents have worked to gather strong evidence that they work.
In Wilmington, Delaware’s DHSS wanted to experiment with cash transfers after its attempts to boost youth employment in areas with a lot of violence got lackluster results. Ultimately, the state wanted to keep teen boys out of harm’s way and reduce gun violence.
The researchers hypothesized that cash transfers, with or without attendance in an after-school program, might help teens engage in healthier behavior, avoid violence, and—as a bonus—attend school more regularly, get into less trouble there, and have better physical and mental health. They conducted a randomized controlled trial with three groups:
Teens lived in one of three ZIP codes with high rates of violent crime and their families were eligible for Medicaid.
The researchers surveyed participants at baseline, monthly, and at exit. They used an “intent to treat” model to estimate effects.
“This study shows that providing cash transfers directly to youth who have a high risk of violence exposure encourages healthier behaviors.”
—Christina Plerhoples Stacy, Daniel Teles, Jorge González‐Hermoso, Fay Walker, Anna Morgan, Urban Institute; Steven Huettner and Pamela A. Matson, Johns Hopkins University; Rachel L. J. Thornton, Nemours Children’s Health
Cash transfers may be a way to prevent youth violence and improve their health.
$255,412
Awarded on: 11/29/2021
Timeframe: 2022-2023
Grant number: 79355
Location: Washington, DC
We conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether an after-school program paired with a cash transfer (a conditional cash transfer) or a cash transfer alone (an unconditional cash transfer) can help improve health and economic outcomes for young men between the ages of 14 and 17 whose parents have low incomes and who live in neighborhoods with high crime rates. We find that receiving the cash transfer alone was associated with an increase in healthy behaviors (one of our primary outcome composite measures) and that the cash transfer paired with after-school programming was associated with an improvement in the financial health of participants (one of our secondary outcome composite measures). We find no differences
in spending on alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, or other drugs between either the treatment group and the control group. Neither the cash transfer alone nor the programming plus cash transfer had statistically significant effects on our other primary composite measures (physical and mental health or school attendance and disciplinary actions), or our other secondary composite measures (criminal justice engagement or social supports) but in most cases, confidence intervals were too large to rule out meaningful effects. Results suggest that cash transfers hold promise to improve the health of youth without any indication of any adverse effects.
J Urban Health, 18 Apr 2024; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-024-00838-y
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
