Rx Kids FAQ

Are you a Rx Kids participant or potential participant? Do you have a question about the program – like do I qualify and what documents do I need?

Answers to questions about how to sign up, eligibility, documents that are needed, cash prescription delivery, contacting program staff, and more, are available by visiting the Rx Kids application page at this link and clicking the “Frequently Asked Questions” button. Find answers to other common questions below. If you have additional questions that you can’t find the answers to, please visit our Contact page and reach out to our team directly.

Rx Kids is open for applicants in several communities in Michigan. Check our “Communities” page for current and future Rx Kids communities as they are added.

Unsure if your address falls into that community? Rx Kids communities are defined in two ways:

By City or Township:

If you live in an Rx Kids Community that is defined by CITY/TOWNSHIP (examples: city of Flint, city of Kalamazoo, city of Pontiac, Royal Oak Township,  city of Hazel Park, city of Dearborn, city of Hamtramck, city of Highland Park, city of Inkster, city of Melvindale) you can check your address in the voter clerk portal, regardless of whether you are registered or eligible to vote. Eligible applicants will see that their clerk is “[CITY/Township name] Clerk”

There may be additional ways to verify your address, depending on the community. Read full eligibility FAQs here

By County:

If you live in an Rx Kids Community that is defined by COUNTY (For example: Eastern U.P. [Luce, Mackinac, Alger, Schoolcraft, Chippewa], and Clare County) residency is based on the geographic location of your physical home/service address. Read full eligibility FAQs here

Rx Kids aims to support families during the most critical period of children’s development: prenatal and in infancy. Rx Kids is an innovative public-private partnership, combining public funding from state, federal, and municipal sources with private support from philanthropy, businesses, and health care systems. 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.” 

We are thrilled that so many communities are interested in starting Rx Kids.

Rx Kids is a plug-and-play program that can be replicated in communities across the nation. The core model is already built with the highest standards of security, privacy, and program integrity.

Over the next three years, Rx Kids aims to expand to dozens of new communities across the state of Michigan. Learn more about bringing Rx Kids to your Michigan community.

Additional resources include:

If you believe that Rx Kids is a good fit for your community, complete the Rx Kids Expansion Interest Form.

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 Rx-Kids@msu.org. 

Child allowances and programs like Rx Kids are fundamentally different from guaranteed income or universal basic income (UBI) in both purpose and design. UBI and guaranteed income proposals are typically broad, adult-centered income supports—often framed as permanent, unconditional cash payments to individuals or households regardless of life stage or specific need. Their goals are usually macroeconomic or structural: simplifying the welfare state, responding to automation, or providing a general income floor. Child allowances, by contrast, are targeted, life-course investments. They focus specifically on pregnancy, infancy, and childhood—periods when resources matter most for brain development, health, and long-term outcomes. The intent is not to replace work or provide a general income, but to make sure children get a healthy start in life.

Programs like Rx Kids are even more distinct because they are explicitly health-driven, time-limited, and population-based. Rx Kids is designed as a public health intervention: it reaches families during pregnancy and infancy, when stress, housing instability, food insecurity, and unmet basic needs have the strongest and most lasting effects on health. The payments are not meant to be a permanent income stream, but a temporary, preventive “cash prescription” during a biologically and socially critical window. That makes Rx Kids more analogous to vaccines, prenatal care, or nutrition programs than to UBI—it’s a targeted investment to prevent costly, lifelong problems before they start.

Another key difference is how these programs relate to work and existing systems. Child allowances and Rx Kids are not anti-work and are not substitutes for wages or jobs. They are complements—designed to stabilize families so parents can work, recover from childbirth, care for infants, and stay housed and healthy during a vulnerable period. UBI, in contrast, is often debated as a wholesale rethinking of income and work in society. Rx Kids and child allowances operate within the existing social and economic system, strengthening it by reducing crisis, improving child health, and lowering downstream costs in healthcare, child welfare, and education.

Finally, the politics and the evidence base are different. Child-focused cash policies have deep historical roots across the globe and broad bipartisan support in many countries because they are framed as investments in children, not as generalized income redistribution. Over 70% of countries and all peer countries have child allowances (see review article here in The Lancet).  Programs like Rx Kids are built on decades of research showing that early-life income and stability improve birth outcomes, child development, and long-term health—while also saving public money over time. In short, child allowances and Rx Kids are not UBI by another name: they are targeted, time-bound, evidence-based public health and child development strategies aimed at giving every baby a fair start.