About MDRC
Hendra directs the Center for Data Insights, which uses rigorous data science methods to improve programs that serve populations in need. During his tenure at MDRC, Hendra has led quantitative research on a range of projects focused on upward mobility. He is currently the project director for the TANF Data Innovation initiative, a national technical assistance project that supports maximizing effective use of TANF and other administrative data to help agencies make more informed decisions about how to best serve their clients. Hendra is also the principal investigator or senior advisor on several evaluations and data science projects focused on employment, housing, training, financial inclusion, and substance abuse issues. Hendra has a Ph.D. in public and urban policy and has over two decades of experience teaching statistics and research methods at the graduate level. He has worked on national preparedness training initiatives and held data analytics positions in multiple sectors. He has served on several expert, curriculum, and dissertation committees and has been a reviewer for several foundations, conferences, and academic journals.
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MDRC Publications
ReportA Toolkit for State and Local Agencies on How to Access, Link, and Analyze Unemployment Insurance Wage Data
November, 2022Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies are increasingly focused on using administrative data to assess how well programs are working and to inform policies and best practices. This toolkit was created to help TANF professionals develop more robust practices using employment data for program monitoring, reporting, and evaluation.
Report36-Month Impacts of the Grameen America Program
March, 2022Grameen America provides microloans to women living in poverty seeking to launch or expand small businesses. The program resulted in a reduction of material hardship and an increase in credit scores, business ownership, business earnings, and nonretirement savings. It also improved participants’ feelings of overall financial well-being.
Report18-Month Impacts of the Grameen America Program
September, 2020Grameen America is a microfinance institution that provides business loans to women in poverty in the United States. Results from a randomized controlled trial show the program increased business ownership and earnings, credit worthiness, and savings, and reduced material hardship among participants, but it did not increase overall net income.
ReportEarly Impacts of the Grameen America Program
March, 2019Grameen America provides loans to low-income women who are seeking to start or expand their small businesses. Early results from a random assignment evaluation show that Grameen participants are more likely to operate their own businesses and to establish credit scores and less likely to experience material hardship.
ReportFebruary, 2018This report presents findings from an analysis of the effects of subsidized/transitional programs on subjective well-being, or how participants feel about their current life situations. The analysis found that the programs had positive effects on both employment and well-being while the programs operated, but these effects dissipated after the programs ended.
MethodologyOctober, 2017To improve outcomes among high-interest borrowers, policymakers need to understand what is driving usage. This second post in MDRC’s Reflections on Methodology series discusses how a data discovery process revealed clusters of borrowers who differed greatly in the kinds of loans and lenders they used and in their loan outcomes.
MethodologySeptember, 2017Machine learning algorithms, when combined with the contextual knowledge of researchers and practitioners, offer service providers nuanced estimates of risk and opportunities to refine their efforts. The first post of a new series, Reflections on Methodology, discusses how MDRC helps organizations make the most of predictive modeling tools.
ReportTwo-Year Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration
August, 2016WorkAdvance provides demand-driven skills training and a focus on jobs with career pathways. As detailed in this full report, all four programs studied greatly increased training completion and credential acquisition. Employment outcomes varied by site, with large, consistent impacts at the most experienced provider and promising results at two others.
ReportA Preview Summary of Two-Year Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration
June, 2016WorkAdvance provides demand-driven skills training and a focus on jobs with career pathways. This preview summary finds that all four programs studied greatly increased training completion and credential acquisition. Employment outcomes varied by site, with large, consistent impacts at the most experienced provider and promising results at two others.
ReportWho Uses Them and Why?
June, 2016Funded by MetLife Foundation, this paper uses a large and unusual data set, combining administrative data provided by subprime lenders with survey and in-depth interview data, to gain a better understanding of the backgrounds, experiences, and needs of people who use online subprime small-dollar credit.
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.
ReportDelivery, Take-Up, and Outcomes of In-Work Training Support for Lone Parents
March, 2011This report presents new findings from Britain’s Employment Advancement and Retention demonstration, which tested the effectiveness of a program to improve the labor market prospects of low-paid workers and unemployed people. The report assesses whether coaching by advisers and financial incentives encouraged single-parent participants to take and complete training courses and whether training had an impact on their advancement in the labor market.
ReportFinal Impacts for Twelve Models
April, 2010This report presents the final implementation and impact findings for 12 programs in the national Employment Retention and Advancement project, sponsored by the federal Administration for Children and Families. These programs attempted to promote steady work and career advancement for current and former welfare recipients and other low-wage workers, most of whom were single mothers.
ReportImplementation and Early Impacts for Two Programs That Sought to Encourage Advancement Among Low-Income Workers
October, 2009While these two different programs in the Employment Retention and Advancement Project both increased service receipt, neither had effects on job retention or advancement after 1.5 years of follow-up.
ReportThe Employment Retention and Advancement Project
April, 2008A program to promote better initial job placements, employment retention, and advancement among unemployed applicants to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program faced implementation challenges and had no employment-related impacts after one year of follow-up.
ReportThe Employment Retention and Advancement Project
May, 2007A random assignment evaluation of a voluntary postemployment program for workers who recently left welfare shows participants had increased employment and earnings during the first two years of follow-up.
ReportOctober, 2006An evaluation of a retention and advancement program for recently employed welfare recipients shows modest increases in employment and large reductions in welfare receipt during the first two years of follow-up.
ReportFebruary, 2006An evaluation of a job placement, retention, and advancement program for individuals receiving welfare showed some effects — but not consistent or large effects — on employment and retention outcomes during the first two years of follow-up.
ReportJune, 2005Early results are mixed for Employment Retention and Advancement project programs in four sites, but programs in two sites appear to help some welfare recipients work more steadily and advance to higher-paying jobs.
ReportJanuary, 2003This report studies the post-welfare experiences of three groups — two that received federal housing assistance when they left the welfare rolls and an unassisted group that did not — to see how they differ with respect to their labor market outcomes, material well-being, and propensity to return to the welfare rolls or rely on other forms of public assistance.
ReportHow Are They Faring?
January, 2003Responding to the growing need to understand whether people who have left the welfare rolls since the passage of the 1996 welfare reform law are able to find and keep jobs and earn enough to lift their families out of poverty, this study compares two groups of single-parent welfare recipients — one that left the welfare rolls in 1996, and a similar group who exited welfare in 1998 —investigating their background characteristics, their employment and earnings experiences, and their material well-being.
ReportFinal Report on Connecticut’s Welfare Reform Initiative
February, 2002ReportFinal Report on Florida’s Initial Time-Limited Welfare Program
December, 2000ReportKey Findings from the Forty-Two-Month Client Survey
June, 2000ReportForty-Two Month Impacts of Vermont’s Welfare Restructuring Project
September, 1999Working PaperSeptember, 1998 -
Other Publications
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Projects
Erika Lundquist, Brit Henderson, Richard Hendra, Caitlin Anzelone, Sophia Sutcliffe, Shawna AndersonWashington state is consistently ranked among the bottom states in Free Application for Federal Student Aid ( FAFSA ) completion. In 2017, Washington left more than $50 million in federal student financial aid on the table. In 2019, the Washington Student Achievement Council ( WSAC ) designed an interactive chatbot called OtterBot to help more students to take...
A college education can be a critical step towards attaining economic mobility, in part because it can translate to higher earnings. But there are differences in the benefits that accrue to Black, Latinx and White graduates. Various factors drive racial wage and income gaps, including occupational segregation, biases in who gets called back for job interviews,...
With support from the $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund, Social Finance aims to empower more than 20,000 learners to realize over $1 billion in aggregate wage gains over the next decade. Google Career Certificates are industry-recognized credentials that prepare people for in-demand, entry-level jobs in the fields of data analytics, IT support, project...
Many federal employment and human service interventions are designed to have long-term effects, yet most evaluations end after only a few years, before the story is fully known. The Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking ( CEP ), established in 2016, produced a report in 2017 calling for greater use of rigorous evidence from random assignment studies and good models...
HomePath is a combined Housing First and shared-medical-appointments intervention. It aims to increase housing stability, improve treatment outcomes, and reduce returns to shelters, emergency rooms, and justice systems for people who have experienced homelessness and are struggling with opioid addiction.
Housing First is a person-centered approach to reducing...
The Grameen America program uses a group microlending model that was pioneered by the original Grameen Bank program in Bangladesh designed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus and has since spread throughout the developing world. As in the original model, loans provided in the United States are approved on a group-lending basis, whereby individuals form groups...
Richard Hendra, Stephanie Rubino, Erika Lundquist, Melissa Wavelet, Johanna Walter, Edith Yang, Mark van Dok, Audrey YuTANF Data Innovation ( TDI ) is a national initiative to support state, local, and tribal agencies that administer Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ( TANF ) and the federal agencies that oversee this work. This initiative aims to substantially expand the routine use, integration, and analysis of TANF and employment data to improve outcomes for families and to...
Across the social sector, government agencies, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations are all benefiting from greater access both to more detailed and frequent data and to a variety of options for increased computing power. With data-science tools and guidance in applying them, practitioners can harness multiple sources of data to gain new insights about the individuals they serve, the contexts in which they operate, their staff members, and their program features. When such tools are incorporated into daily operations in a responsible way, they can help practitioners improve their programs and the lives of those they serve.
The H-1B visa program, established in 1990 by Congress, allows employers to hire foreigners to work in “specialty occupations” (such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, health care, business, financial services, or life sciences) on a temporary basis. In 1998, a user fee was added to fund scholarship and training programs that develop the skills of the...
Barbara S. Goldman, Frieda Molina, Donna Wharton-Fields, Richard Hendra, David Navarro, Susan Scrivener, Betsy L. Tessler, Jonathan Bigelow, Keith Olejniczak, Kelsey Schaberg, Annie Utterback, Alexandra Pennington, Brandon HawkinsThe Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ( SNAP ) — formerly the food stamp program —is a critical work support for low-income people and families. Although SNAP has included various employment and training requirements for adult recipients to maintain their eligibility since the 1970s, the SNAP Employment and Training ( SNAP E&T ) program was established as...
Payday loans are short-term loans geared toward working-class and lower middle-class households that possess access to bank accounts and can prove sustained employment. People may use them and other alternative credit instruments to deal with unexpected expenses or simply to make ends meet between paychecks. While the loans are expensive, they may be one of the only...
Frieda Molina, Barbara S. Goldman, Richard Hendra, Betsy L. Tessler, Keith Olejniczak, Kelsey Schaberg, Hannah Dalporto, Alexandra PenningtonPast evaluations have provided solid evidence regarding what works to help low-income individuals become employed. However, these studies have also found that many people who found jobs were not better off financially, in part because these jobs were unstable, low paying, and provided few advancement opportunities. More recent randomized controlled evaluations of both...
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 and school support. This work seeks to create a catalog of proven approaches that can be replicated...
Dan Bloom, Richard Hendra, Melanie Skemer, David Navarro, Sally Dai, Bret Barden, Kyla Wasserman, Jillian Verrillo, Chloe Anderson GolubOver the past 80 years, a variety of subsidized employment strategies have been used for two main purposes: (1) to provide work-based income support for people who are not able to find regular, unsubsidized jobs; and (2) to improve the employability of disadvantaged groups. Programs with the first goal have typically emerged during periods of sustained high...
Richard Hendra, Cynthia Miller, Susan Scrivener, Frieda Molina, David Navarro, Barbara S. Goldman, Dan Bloom, John Martinez, Mark van Dok, Erika Lundquist, Edith Yang, Alexandra PenningtonThe federal welfare overhaul of 1996 ushered in myriad policy changes aimed at getting low-income parents off public assistance and into employment. These changes — especially cash welfare’s transformation from an entitlement into a time-limited benefit contingent on work participation — have intensified the need to help low-income families become economically self-...
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...