Population: Families

Single-Parent Families

Single-parent families are more likely than two-parent families to live in poverty. Not surprisingly, many of the participants in MDRC’s evaluations and demonstrations across policy areas are single parents and their families.

The Latest
Report

Promoting Prenatal Health and Positive Birth Outcomes

The Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation-Strong Start (MIHOPE-Strong Start) aims to determine whether home visiting programs improve birth- and health-related outcomes up to age 1. This report provides a snapshot of state efforts to promote prenatal health and improve birth outcomes, including but not limited to home visiting.

Overview »
Full
Brief

Dates and Deadlines

An essential step in the child support process is delivering legal documents to the person named as a parent. This intervention in Georgia applied insights from behavioral science to get more parents to come in and accept documents voluntarily instead of using a sheriff or process server to deliver them.

Overview »
Full
Key Documents
Report

Paths to Advancement for Single Parents

This report from the national Employment Retention and Advancement Project examines the 27,000 single parents who participated in the studied programs to understand the characteristics of those who successfully advanced in the labor market.

Read More »
Infographic

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) Project

As the first major effort to use a behavioral economics lens to examine human services programs that serve poor and vulnerable families in the United States, the BIAS project demonstrated the value of applying behavioral insights to improve the efficacy of human services programs.

Read More »