Rx Kids FAQ

Rx Kids is open for applicants in the city of Flint. Applications launch in the city of Kalamazoo on February 12, 2025 and in the Eastern Upper Peninsula on March 3, 2025. Check our website for future Rx Kids communities as they are added.

For most people, a child’s birth is a joyous event. For too many families, though, income plunges, and poverty spikes right before a child is born and remains high throughout the first year. These first months of life are critical for a baby’s development; it’s also when their families are struggling the most. Cash prescriptions help families make ends meet, enabling them to meet basic needs. By increasing economic stability, housing stability, food security and nutrition, and healthcare uptake, these payments can improve infant and maternal health and wellbeing, and even longer-term outcomes. 

A place-based program, delivering cash to every mother and infant has the potential to not only improve individual outcomes but also to increase economic activity and create a multiplier effect that benefits the community as a whole. 

In partnership with community, researchers at Michigan State University-Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative in collaboration with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan are conducting a mixed methods evaluation that includes quantitative analysis and interviews with participating mothers. Researchers aim to isolate the impacts of the transfers from other factors by including a comparison group of babies born outside of current Rx Kids communities. More about Rx Kids research is available on our website.

In an ideal world, Rx Kids would last for the duration of childhood.

Unfortunately, funding and administering this type of program is not feasible or scalable at this time. Instead, we decide to intervene at the most critical period of children’s development: prenatal and in infancy. In some of our communities, this means our program has monthly prescriptions from 0-6 months, in other communities, the program lasts through 12 months. All of our programs have the prenatal cash prescription component.  

Rx Kids is designed with the intent to be scalable and as administratively efficient as possible. As such, the core design (universal and unconditional cash prescriptions) and components (prenatal and infant cash prescriptions) are not meant to be changed for different communities. In addition, Rx Kids messaging—centered on health, hope, and opportunity—is fundamental to our program design. While we work closely with our community champions to ensure that our program is accessible to participants, core program components are not meant to be changed in expansion communities.  

Rx Kids research is centrally coordinated by Michigan State University-Pediatric Public Health Initiative and Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan. Please see our Research page and review “Information for Interested Researchers.” 

1. Deliver the cash: Rx Kids aims to provide cash payments to every expectant mother and infant in the municipalities the program serves. In doing so, we aim to improve infant and maternal health, the economic and mental wellbeing of participants, and community-wide outcomes. 
2. Show what’s possible for others: The city of Flint was our first Rx Kids community. Our aim is to spark a national movement to shift more resources directly to families and build a brighter future for children born into poverty. 
3. Change the narrative around poverty/deservedness: We’re shifting the poverty narrative around money by empowering families to make economic decisions that best fit their immediate needs. This is about dignity, love, trust, and restoring the social contract. 

Rx Kids takes an approach of targeted universalism: our program is for EVERYONE in a selected low-income community. Expansion communities are selected based on various characteristics that indicate a high level of need, including, but not limited to: high levels of child poverty, poor maternal health/birth outcomes, and geographic disparities. Communities are also selected based on feasibility of running the program: factors such as population size, presence of community partners who want to act as champions, and obtaining additional funding also impact the selection of expansion communities. 

1. Hundreds of studies show that unconditional cash transfers can be life-changing across countries and contexts. Mothers and babies are no different, and early intervention is shown to have sustained health and development impacts years after cash is delivered. 
2. Healthier pregnancies: Multiple studies have found positive impacts of cash on birth weight, premature births, and breastfeeding, parental mental health, and food security. 
3. Improved early development: New research shows that $333 monthly cash transfers to low-income families boosted infants’ early cognitive development. 
4. Impact lasts into adulthood: Years after their moms received cash transfers, adult children experienced benefits across health, education, and nutrition, lifetime earnings, and reduced anxiety and depression. 
5. The 2021 Expanded Child Tax Credit lifted millions of families out of poverty and drove child poverty to a record low of 5.2 percent. Evidence shows numerous additional benefits, including reduced food insecurity and financial hardship, improved health for children and parents, better school performance, and reduced incidence of child abuse. Benefits extend into adulthood and far exceed the cost of the expanded tax credit. 

We are thrilled that other communities are interested in starting Rx Kids in their own communities. Rx Kids is an already-built, plug-and-play, program that can be easily brought to other communities across the nation. Please start by reading our “Playbook for Replicating Rx Kids” and “Scaling up Prenatal and Infant Cash Prescriptions to Eradicate Deep Infant Poverty in the United States.” If you believe that Rx Kids is a good fit for your community, we encourage you to reach out to Rx-[email protected]. 

Thank you for your interest in Rx Kids! We would love to have you join our “Village of Funders.” Interested funders can either give a gift by clicking “Give” on our website, or, for larger gifts or requests for fundraising proposals, please email [email protected].