About MDRC
As Principal Research Fellow, Riccio spearheads the development of new projects, particularly in the areas of economic mobility, housing, and communities. From 2004 to 2021, he directed MDRC’s Economic Mobility, Housing, and Communities policy area, which tests innovative policies to improve labor market, human development, and quality-of-life outcomes for low-income populations. He serves as the principal investigator for a number of large studies, including evaluations of a community transformation initiative called Purpose Built Communities; the Supporting Moves to Opportunity residential mobility program for housing voucher recipients in Milwaukee and St. Louis and a related program in Chicago; two HUD-sponsored demonstrations testing alternative rent policies for housing voucher recipients and public housing residents in a variety of cities; and a workforce coaching program for subsidized tenants in Baltimore and Houston, called MyGoals for Employment Success. He previously directed MDRC’s original Jobs-Plus employment initiative for public housing residents; helped design a study of a community change initiative in Chicago called the New Communities Program; and led teams designing and evaluating conditional cash transfer programs in New York City and Memphis. He also led an MDRC-United Kingdom research consortium to design and test a workforce development initiative called the UK Employment Retention and Advancement Demonstration. He is on the Board of Directors of The Community Builders, a national, nonprofit low-income housing developer, and serves on a research methods advisory panel for the UK Department of Work and Pensions. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton.
-
MDRC Publications
ReportJanuary, 2021The Rent Reform Demonstration is testing an alternative rent-setting system for housing choice voucher recipients. It offers an employment incentive and aims to reduce administrative complexity and cost without burdening participating households. This report presents impacts on labor market and housing-related outcomes through roughly three and a half years.
ReportIntroducing the MyGoals Demonstration
May, 2020The MyGoals for Employment Success demonstration uses executive skills coaching to help participants with emotional control, stress tolerance, time management, organization, flexibility, and persistence, which are vital to success in the workplace. Research showing that poverty causes stress and impedes these skills informs the approach of this pilot program.
ReportAugust, 2019This report presents 27- to 30-month impacts of an alternative rent policy for housing voucher recipients in four locations. Voucher program tenure and monthly housing subsidies increased for recipients, and housing agencies’ administrative burdens decreased. Average earnings did not rise overall, but earnings increased in two locations and employment increased in one.
ReportMay, 2019This report presents early impacts on an alternative rent policy designed to reward work among housing voucher recipients. The policy increased earnings in two of four locations, reduced administrative burdens in all four housing agencies, and somewhat reduced tenants’ rent and utilities expenses and their likelihood of exiting the voucher program.
ReportRent Reform Demonstration Baseline Report
October, 2017Housing Choice Vouchers subsidize rent and utilities for homes that families rent from private landlords. The Rent Reform Demonstration is testing an alternative rent policy for voucher recipients. This report describes the new policy, the rationale behind each of its elements, and the way it is being evaluated.
ReportWhat Worked, What Didn’t
May, 2016Family Rewards offered cash incentives to low-income families to reduce both current and longer-term poverty, contingent on families’ efforts to build up their “human capital” through children’s education, preventive health care, and parents’ employment. While the program produced some positive effects on some outcomes, it left many outcomes unchanged.
ReportThe Continuing Story of the Opportunity NYC−Family Rewards Demonstration
September, 2013Family Rewards, a three-year demonstration, provided cash payments to low-income families in New York City for achieving specific health, education, and employment goals. New results show that the program substantially reduced poverty and material hardship while it operated and had positive results in improving some education, health, and work-related outcomes.
ReportEarly Findings from a Program for Housing Voucher Recipients in New York City
December, 2012Opportunity NYC–Work Rewards is testing three ways of increasing work among families receiving housing vouchers — services and a savings plan under the federal Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, the FSS program plus cash incentives for sustained full-time work, and the cash incentives alone. Early results suggest intriguing positive findings for certain subgroups.
ReportFinal Evidence from the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) Demonstration
August, 2011The British ERA program’s distinctive combination of post-employment advisory support and financial incentives was designed to help low-income individuals who entered work sustain employment and advance in the labor market. It produced short-term earnings gains for two target groups but sustained increases in employment and earnings and positive benefit-cost results for the third target group, long-term unemployed individuals.
ReportEarly Findings from New York City’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program
March, 2010Targeted toward low-income families in six high-poverty New York City communities, Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards offers cash payments tied to efforts and achievements in children’s education, family preventive health care practices, and parents’ employment. In its first two years, the program substantially reduced poverty and material hardship and had positive results in improving some education, health-related, and work-related outcomes.
BriefSeven-Year Findings from the Jobs-Plus Demonstration
January, 2010An extended analysis of Jobs-Plus, an ambitious employment program inside some of the nation’s poorest inner-city public housing developments, finds substantial effects on residents’ earnings a full three years after the program ended.
ReportA Research Note for Funders
June, 2009Targeted toward very low-income families in six high-poverty New York City communities, Family Rewards offers cash payments tied to efforts and achievements in children’s education, family preventive health care practices, and parents’ employment. This paper reviews data on participants’ receipt of rewards and offers preliminary estimates of the program’s impacts on selected educational outcomes during the first year.
ReportSeptember, 2008This report published by the UK Department for Work and Pensions presents new findings on the effects of a program to help long-term unemployed individuals who receive government benefits in Great Britain and participate in a welfare-to-work program, New Deal 25 Plus, retain jobs and advance in the labor market.
ReportMay, 2008This report presents new and positive findings on the effects of Britain’s Employment Retention and Advancement demonstration. After two years, the program increased employment and earnings for single-parent participants. ERA offered a combination of job coaching and financial incentives to encourage low-income individuals to sustain employment and progress in work.
Working PaperBuilding Evidence About What Works to Improve Self-Sufficiency
March, 2007This working paper argues for building a stronger base of evidence in the housing-employment policy arena through an expanded use of randomized controlled trials.
ReportFebruary, 2007This report published by the UK Department for Work and Pensions presents encouraging findings on the early effects of Britain’s Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) Demonstration. Aimed at helping low-income individuals sustain employment and progress in work, ERA offers a combination of job coaching and financial incentives to participants once they are working.
TestimonyPresented Before the Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census, House Committee on Government Reform
June, 2006MDRC’s study of Jobs-Plus, an employment program for public housing residents, offered the first hard evidence that a work-focused intervention based in public housing can effectively boost residents’ earnings and promote their self-sufficiency. Congress may wish to consider introducing Jobs-Plus in additional housing developments across the country.
ReportLaunching the Work Advancement and Support Center Demonstration
March, 2006The Work Advancement and Support Center demonstration tests an innovative approach to fostering employment retention, career advancement, and increased take-up of work supports for a broad range of low-earners, including reemployed dislocated workers. This report examines start-up experiences in the first two sites: Dayton, Ohio, and San Diego, California.
ReportPromoting Work in Seattle Public Housing During a HOPE VI Redevelopment
October, 2005Early success for this ambitious employment program for public housing residents in Seattle was disrupted by a federal HOPE VI grant to tear down and revitalize the housing development.
ReportThe Effectiveness of Jobs-Plus
March, 2005Jobs-Plus, an ambitious employment program inside some of the nation’s poorest inner-city public housing developments, markedly increased the earnings of residents in the sites where it was implemented well.
ReportEvidence from Connecticut and Minnesota
September, 2003Using data from two random assignment welfare reform experiments, this report contributes insights to efforts to foster economic self-sufficiency in both the assisted housing and the welfare policy arenas.
BriefLearning from the Jobs-Plus Demonstration
November, 2001MethodologyNew Directions in Evaluations of American Welfare-to-Work and Employment Initiatives
October, 2001MethodologyThe Effects of Program Management and Services, Economic Environment, and Client Characteristics
July, 2001ReportCollaboration Among Agencies and Public Housing Residents in the Jobs-Plus Demonstration
May, 2001BriefLearning from the Jobs-Plus Demonstration
May, 2001ReportOrigins and Early Accomplishments of the Jobs-Plus Demonstration
September, 1999ReportA Saturation and Place-Based Employment Initiative for Public Housing Residents
May, 1998 -
Other Publications
-
Projects
Nandita Verma, James A. Riccio, Gilda Azurdia, Jonathan Bigelow, Cynthia Miller, Caroline Schultz, Edith Yang, Melissa WestGrowing up in high-poverty, highly segregated neighborhoods can limit the future prospects of young children. But low-income families with children often lack sufficient resources and face other systemic barriers to choosing freely what neighborhoods they live in. The federal government’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, which subsidizes rent for some low-income...
Over 2 million households receive federal housing subsidies that allow them to rent in the private rental market. The Housing Choice Voucher program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), requires households to pay 30 percent of their incomes toward rent; HUD...
The concentration of Housing Choice Voucher Program participants in high-poverty neighborhoods has been a concern of practitioners and policymakers for decades. Compelling research by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence Katz found that when young children move to “high-opportunity” areas, their prospects for better economic outcomes as adults can greatly...
Megan Millenky, Dan Bloom, Susan Scrivener, Charles Michalopoulos, Dina A. R. Israel, Johanna Walter, Lauren Cates, Sally Dai, Caroline Mage, Emily Marano, Viktoriya Syrov, Douglas Phillips, Kyla Wasserman, Lily Freedman, Osvaldo Avila, Emily Brennan, Jillian Verrillo, Gilda Azurdia, Frieda Molina, Shelley Rappaport, Clinton Key, Nandita Verma, Cynthia Miller, Jared Smith, Shawna Anderson, Kelsey Schaberg, Caitlin Anzelone, James A. Riccio, Keri West, Caroline Schultz, Ethan Feldman
Many Americans struggle in the labor market even when overall economic conditions are good. Unemployment is persistently high for some demographic groups and in certain geographic areas, and a large proportion of...
In 2007, New York City officials launched three related initiatives testing distinct strategies for promoting employment and economic well-being among recipients of housing assistance, particularly those receiving rent subsidies through Housing Choice Vouchers (also known as “Section 8” assistance, after Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937). Called the Work Rewards...
James A. Riccio, Cynthia Miller, Nandita Verma, Edith Yang, Jared Smith, Gilda Azurdia, Donna Wharton-Fields, Anne Warren, M. Victoria Quiroz BecerraFamily Rewards was an innovative approach to poverty reduction in the United States that was modeled on the conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs common in lower- and middle-income countries. The program offered cash assistance to poor families, contingent on their meeting certain criteria related to family health care, children’s education...
James A. Riccio, Donna Wharton-Fields, Nina Castells, Stephanie Rubino, Keith Olejniczak, Joshua Vermette, Hannah Dalporto, Annie UtterbackMyGoals for Employment Success is a new workforce program intended to help recipients of federal housing subsidies who are not employed find work, build careers, and advance toward greater self-sufficiency. The program incorporates an innovative employment coaching model that is informed by current literature in behavioral psychology on executive functioning skills and...
The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) was the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) flagship redevelopment program and at the time its most significant neighborhood transformation initiative in decades. CNI supported local agencies to rebuild...
James A. Riccio, Nandita Verma, Gilda Azurdia, Edith Yang, Jonathan Bigelow, Keith Olejniczak, Joshua Vermette, Audrey Yu, Melissa WestThe Housing Choice Voucher Program is one of the federal government’s major programs for helping very low-income families with children, elderly people, and disabled people afford decent and safe housing in the private rental market. Housing vouchers are administered locally by public housing agencies with funding from the U.S. Department of...
Nandita Verma, James A. Riccio, Donna Wharton-Fields, Betsy L. Tessler, Stephanie Rubino, David Navarro, Michelle Ware, Joshua VermetteThe Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program is the main federal program for increasing employment and earnings and reducing reliance on government subsidies among recipients of housing subsidies. Created in 1990, FSS is administered by state and local public housing agencies with funding from the U.S...
A central challenge in welfare policy arises from the dual imperatives to promote self-sufficiency among welfare recipients and to protect vulnerable families from economic deprivation. In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the U.S. moved to expand the services it offered recipients to help them prepare for and find work, while also...
Can community-led efforts improve outcomes for residents at the neighborhood level? This is a critical question for policy and practice. For over a decade, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has supported the Local Initiatives Support Corporation of Chicago (LISC Chicago) to make neighborhoods safer, support young people,...
James A. Riccio, Gilda Azurdia, Nandita Verma, Donna Wharton-Fields, Cynthia Miller, Jared Smith, Edith Yang, Betsy L. Tessler, Nikki OrtolaniIn March 2007, former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his intention to test a set of antipoverty initiatives, called Opportunity NYC, that would use temporary cash payments to poor families to boost their income in the short term, while building their ability to avoid longer-term and second-generation poverty. Such payments...
James A. Riccio, Gilda Azurdia, Edith Yang, Donna Wharton-Fields, Nandita Verma, Caroline Schultz, Frieda Molina, Cynthia Miller, Richard Hendra, Barbara S. Goldman, Jared Smith, Mark van Dok, Natasha Piatnitskaia, Betsy L. Tessler, Stephanie Rubino, Sharon RowserThe Social Innovation Fund (SIF), an initiative enacted under the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, deploys millions of dollars in public-private funds to expand effective solutions in three issue areas: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development...
Nandita Verma, James A. Riccio, Donna Wharton-Fields, Betsy L. Tessler, Nikki Ortolani, Jonathan Bigelow, M. Victoria Quiroz Becerra, Edith YangPublic housing developments are among the most economically challenged neighborhoods in the United States. In fact, many public housing residents face obstacles to employment even beyond those normally experienced by other low-income people. To address this problem, Jobs-Plus was conceived in the mid-1990s by the U.S. Department of Housing and...
Frieda Molina, Cynthia Miller, David Navarro, James A. Riccio, Caroline Schultz, Betsy L. Tessler, Mark van Dok, Anne Warren, Alexandra PenningtonThe wages and earnings of low-income workers have been stagnant or declining in real terms for approximately 35 years. Nationwide, the labor market-driven growth of the low-wage workforce has become a major issue for both the business community and the public. Low-wage workers represent a significant segment of the nation’s workforce: According to the Bureau of Labor...
Until recently, employment policy in the United Kingdom had been focused principally on helping people who had lost their jobs to find work. Although some government-sponsored measures were available to help those on the margins of employment retain their jobs and improve their earnings, there had been less support for people once they had found jobs. The launch of the...