For Participants and Interested Families

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?

If you have questions on eligibility and document requirements, please review the Rx Kids Participant Guidebook and Apply.  If you have additional questions, please visit our Contact page and reach out to our team directly.

As the nation’s first-ever community-wide prenatal and infant cash prescription program, Rx Kids is providing life-changing financial security that is universal and unconditional. Moms receive $1,500 during pregnancy, and babies receive $500 per month for either 6 or 12 months after birth, with local community leaders selecting the program duration based on funds raised.

To qualify for Rx Kids, you must be a resident of one of the participating locations. Find out if you live in an Rx Kids community and apply online.

To qualify for Rx Kids, you must be pregnant or a parent/guardian of an infant under 6 months, and a resident of one of the participating locations.

  • Step 1: Find out if you live in an Rx Kids Community To qualify for Rx Kids, you must be a resident of a participating location. 
  • Step 2: Gather your documents You will need to verify your identity, residency within the participating location, and pregnancy or the birth of an eligible child. Families can enroll anytime from 16+ weeks pregnancy until six months of age, as long as the baby was born after the community’s launch date.
  • Step 3: Apply online The simple, secure application is mom-tested and can be completed in less than 30 minutes. After verification, you will receive a message letting you know when to expect your first payment. Payments begin at the point of enrollment.

Applicants may be asked to provide documentation to verify their identity, residency, pregnancy, and/or their baby’s birth. To see what documents you need to apply, review our Rx Kids guidebook.

For help with your applications, payments, updating contact information, verifying the birth of your child, or any other issue regarding your participation with Rx Kids, reach out to GiveDirectly’s support team.

If you are looking for other resources and support in your community, visit the Rx Kids Community page, select your community, and scroll down to find local, state, and national resources for moms, babies, and families.

General Information About Rx Kids

Rx Kids is a national maternal and infant health program that provides direct cash support to entire populations of moms and babies during pregnancy and infancy—a period of acute economic hardship and critical importance for lifelong health and development.

Rx Kids launched in Flint, Michigan, in 2024 and has since expanded nationally.

Learn more about Rx Kids.

Pregnancy and infancy are among the most important—and most financially challenging—periods in a family’s life. A baby’s brain and body develop rapidly during this period, while families simultaneously face new expenses and often changes in employment and income.

Rx Kids is time-limited to address this predictable and particularly economically vulnerable period around childbirth. It is also focused on this critical window, when investing in families can support maternal and infant health and give babies a stronger start from the very beginning.

Every family’s needs are different. One family may need diapers and formula; another may need help with rent and keeping the lights on; and still another might need help with co-pays and hospital bills. Direct cash support gives families the flexibility and dignity to meet their most urgent needs. 

This approach is consistent with global recommendations: international child health organizations such as UNICEF recommend unconditional child benefits as an effective way to support children and families. It also has a recent precedent here in the United States: the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit provided unconditional monthly cash payments to millions of American families with children. As a result, the expanded Child Tax Credit helped drive child poverty to a historic low while improving food security and family stability. 

Restricting purchases would add costly bureaucracy and require monitoring how families spend their payments, without evidence that doing so improves outcomes.

Rx Kids is a place-based maternal and infant health program. Families in high-need communities often face overlapping challenges, including fewer health care resources, unstable housing, environmental hazards, limited access to healthy food, and fewer economic opportunities. 

Rx Kids is designed to counter these place-based disparities by investing in every mom and baby within a community during pregnancy and infancy. This universal approach is also consistent with global recommendations for universal child transfers, which recognize that broad eligibility can increase access, reduce stigma and administrative barriers, and ensure more children receive support.

A community-wide approach makes eligibility clear, simple, and immediate—eliminating complicated income tests, reducing administrative burden, increasing participation, and ensuring families receive support when it matters most.

We know how families use their Rx Kids payments because we ask them. Repeated surveys of thousands of Rx Kids moms across many different kinds of communities consistently show that families use their cash prescriptions to meet essential needs.

Families most often report spending Rx Kids payments on baby supplies (including diapers and formula), as well as food, rent, and utilities.

These findings are also consistent with decades of research on child cash transfer programs in the United States and around the world: when families receive direct economic support, they overwhelmingly use it to meet basic needs and strengthen family stability.

Rx Kids builds on decades of evidence from the United States and around the world showing that providing families with additional economic resources during childhood can improve health, development, and family well-being.

The results from Rx Kids are already compelling, with many publications in rigorous peer-reviewed journals. Research has found healthier births, earlier and more consistent prenatal care, reduced housing and food hardships, lower likelihood of postpartum depression, reduced parenting stress, and reduced involvement with Child Protective Services.

Our commitment is not simply to provide support, but to rigorously study what works, measure the results, and transparently share the evidence.

Rx Kids uses a rigorous enrollment and verification process designed to protect families and safeguard public and philanthropic dollars. Rx Kids is administered by GiveDirectly, a global leader in delivering safe, secure, and efficient cash transfer programs, with extensive experience in fraud prevention and program integrity.

Applicants provide documentation verifying identity, residency, pregnancy and/or the child’s birth. Applications undergo automated checks and human review to identify errors, duplicate applications, and potential fraud. Payments are then delivered securely through direct deposit or debit card.

Strong program integrity is essential to Rx Kids—and so is making enrollment as simple as possible for eligible families.

Rx Kids builds on a large body of evidence showing that investing early in children can generate substantial long-term economic returns.By supporting families during pregnancy and infancy, Rx Kids can improve outcomes that carry significant costs for families and society.

For example, healthier births and fewer NICU admissions can reduce health care costs. Greater housing and food stability can help prevent costly crises. Reduced child welfare involvement can lessen costs to families and public systems. And improved maternal mental health can generate productivity benefits that extend well beyond the first year of life.

These savings can accrue to families, health care systems, employers, communities, and federal, state, and local governments.

Yes. When families have more resources, much of that money is spent quickly and locally, often at grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants, gas stations, landlords, and other local businesses.

An independent analysis by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that Rx Kids generates meaningful economic benefits beyond the families who receive payments. For every $1 invested in Rx Kids, an additional $0.60 to $3.00 is generated in Michigan’s economy. The analysis also estimated that Rx Kids is a job creator – supporting additional downstream jobs in multiple sectors where families spend their money. 

In other words, Rx Kids can also be considered as economic development – investing in moms and babies also means an even greater investment in local businesses, jobs, and communities. See the Rx Kids daily dashboard that includes an estimate of the economic multiplier effect.