Founded in 1974, MDRC is committed to improving the lives of people with low incomes. We design promising new interventions, evaluate existing programs, and provide technical assistance to build better programs.
MDRC develops evidence about solutions to some of the nation’s most difficult problems. Explore our projects and variety of products, including publications, videos, podcast episodes, and resources for researchers and practitioners.
Summary Report on the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation
This report summarizes an evaluation of a program that helps young people with histories of foster care or juvenile justice custody become independent adults. The program improved earnings, housing stability and economic well-being, and some health and safety outcomes. It did not improve education, social support, or criminal involvement outcomes.
In NYC P-TECH Grades 9-14 schools, students take an integrated sequence of high school and college courses with the goal of completing both high school and college, while simultaneously being exposed to hands-on work experiences. This infographic describes the model and introduces MDRC’s evaluation of it.
Findings from the Subprime Lending Data Exploration Project
Medical debt was a main theme emerging from a survey and interviews with individuals who use payday or subprime installment loans. Many respondents reported using such loans to pay medical bills or to cover regular expenses that may have originated from a health-related emergency.
The new book Randomistas describes how randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have revolutionized many fields. RCTs are a uniquely powerful tool, but they are not the only way to build knowledge about effective programs for low-income people.
Findings from Three New Studies of Youth Employment Programs
Over four million young people in the United States are “disconnected,” meaning they are not in school and are not working. In the past few months, studies of three programs aimed at such young people have released new findings. This brief discusses these findings and their implications.
How can researchers increase the likelihood that focus groups produce information that addresses key implementation questions? The Implementation Research Incubator presents an example of a simple protocol designed to encourage conversational flow about a complex issue — cooperative learning — while helping the interviewers explore core topics in depth.
With its new Center for Data Insights, MDRC is furthering its long-standing commitment to helping our partners improve their programs and systems. This issue focus describes how the Center is assisting government agencies, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations use their data better to refine and target their services.
This paper reports outcomes for community college students who took modularized, self-paced, computer-assisted, remedial math courses with outcomes of students who took “traditional” (that is, mostly lecture-based) classes. Modularized courses were no more (or less) effective than traditional courses at helping students complete their developmental math requirements.
By combining prior beliefs about a program’s effectiveness with new data to produce a distribution of impacts, Bayesian statistics provides an alternative to classical methods that may be more useful for policymaking. Reflections on Methodology discusses some issues with and applications of this approach.
Results from the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation
Adverse experiences in children’s earliest years can negatively affect development. Home visiting for expectant parents and families with young children can help, but implementation research is scant. MIHOPE, a national evaluation of a federal home visiting program, is examining 88 local programs across four evidence-based models to learn about their implementation and impacts.
Lessons from the New York City Change Capital Fund’s Economic Mobility Initiative (2014-2018)
A group of 17 donors are collaborating to provide multiyear funding to help community organizations build data capacity and integrate services — an uncommon opportunity. This report reviews the progress made among the first round of grantees and considers lessons involving donor expectations, technical assistance, and stakeholder involvement.
This paper reviews the available evidence supporting various types of career and technical education programs, touching on both the amount of evidence available in each area and its level of rigor.
Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP) is an initiative to help young people who have been involved in the foster care or juvenile justice systems, or who are homeless. This brief provides details on the models in LEAP and the young people participating, and offers some early implementation findings.
Early findings show that using multiple measures to assess college readiness reduces the number of students placed in remedial classes and increases the number who enroll in and complete college-level math and English.
Studying implementation is a multidisciplinary exercise requiring careful planning and coordination. This post, the first of several from the Implementation Research Incubator describing the processes and procedures of MDRC’s work, shows how a wide array of staff members contribute to the effort.
Final Impact Findings from the Paycheck Plus Demonstration in New York City
Paycheck Plus raises the top tax credit for low-income workers without dependent children from $500 to $2,000. In a three-year test, the program increased after-credit earnings, reducing severe poverty; modestly improved employment among women and more disadvantaged men; and led to more noncustodial parents paying child support.
Subsidized Employment Programs Serving American Indians and Alaska Natives
This report describes the ways in which eight TANF programs primarily serving American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) families use subsidized employment. It found that their use of subsidized employment has the potential to provide work opportunities for AIAN individuals with limited work experience and barriers to employment.
Final Impacts and Costs of New York City's Young Adult Internship Program
This report presents 30-month impacts from a random assignment evaluation of a program that subsidized employers to offer temporary paid jobs to young people who were disconnected from school and work in New York City. After 30 months, program enrollees and nonenrollees fared similarly, with the former slightly more likely to report employment.
The fourth in a series from the Chicago Community Networks study, this web feature explores how partnerships within local collaborations can both sustain themselves and adapt in the face of external events, using one Chicago neighborhood as a case study.
An essential step in the child support process is delivering legal documents to the person named as a parent. This infographic summarizes results from a Georgia intervention that aimed to get parents to come in and accept documents voluntarily instead of using a sheriff or process server to deliver them.
