Use the tools at left to search for and filter publications.
Use the tools at bottom to search for and filter publications.
Next Steps for Research
The paper summarizes past and ongoing research, identifies gaps in knowledge, and presents four categories of potential questions to help define future research in employment and training programs serving low-income people.
A Guide to Social Impact Bond Investing
MDRC President Gordon Berlin draws lessons from MDRC’s implementation of the first social impact bond (SIB) project in the United States, providing valuable insights into the inner workings of SIB deals and explaining the challenges and the potential of this impact investing model.
This program aimed to improve health care quality and reduce Medicaid costs for high-needs Medicaid recipients in New York by helping them use appropriate care that would reduce hospital admissions and emergency department visits. The program did not appear to reduce Medicaid costs or care from hospitals and emergency departments.
This brief essay by Gordon Berlin, first published by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, builds on MDRC’s experience as the intermediary in the nation’s first operational Social Impact Bond to describe three broad challenges facing the Pay for Success movement as it moves from promising concept to on-the-ground implementation.
Early Lessons from the New York City Social Impact Bond
A social impact bond (SIB) is an innovative way to fund promising new programs at no cost to taxpayers. This report describes the first operational SIB in the U.S., explaining how an intervention for youth incarcerated at Rikers Island was developed, how the unique financing mechanism was arranged, and how the program was adapted and implemented at full scale.
Managing Health Care for Medicaid Recipients with Disabilities
This program aimed to improve the quality of health care while reducing Medicaid costs by helping individuals use appropriate care that would reduce hospital admissions and emergency department visits. Like a similar pilot run by Colorado Access, which is described in a separate report, it had little effect on health care use.
Final Report on the Colorado Access Coordinated Care Pilot Program
This pilot program aimed to improve the quality of health care while reducing Medicaid costs by helping individuals use appropriate care that would reduce hospital admissions and emergency department visits. The program had little effect on health care use, but the report suggests several ways to improve its design.
This article, first published in Community Development Investment Review, proposes a vision of a social impact bond model that moves beyond just achieving cost-savings to spurring innovation, knowledge-building, rigorous evaluation, and, potentially, outcomes that achieve other socially desirable goals.
While we know how to help low-income individuals prepare for and find work, too many end up in low-wage jobs and never advance up the career ladder. This policy memo describes what we’ve learned about advancement strategies — both those that show promise and those that don’t work.
Subsidized employment programs provide jobs to people who cannot find employment in the regular labor market and use public funds to pay all or some of their wages. Part of our “Looking Forward” series, this policy memo describes how these programs may be part of the answer for the long-term unemployed in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Get the latest info on MDRC publications, projects, and other news. We send email updates a couple of times each month.
