Playbook for Replicating Rx Kids
Rx Kids is a landmark program that launched in Flint, Michigan, in January 2024, and is rapidly expanding to other communities thanks to a public-private partnership that utilizes TANF funding while protecting public benefits.
This unique program builds on the historic success of the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit that lifted millions of children out of poverty through a policy design that mirrored universal, unconditional child cash benefits used in nations all over the world. The expanded Child Tax Credit also improved the food security, financial security, and mental health of parents.
Based on this domestic and international evidence base, Rx Kids employs three critical dimensions of program design:
- Rx Kids is universal, serving all families with new infants within a very poor city (a form of targeted universalism). It does not utilize a lottery or impose an income test.
- Rx Kids is unconditional, meaning that the aid does not require families to fulfill obligations in order to receive support.
- Rx Kids benefits are predictable because everyone gets the same cash prescription amounts and virtually all public benefits are protected and not impacted by them.
Eliminating deep poverty among families.
Bolstering Family Financial Security. Improving health equity. Revitalizing the local economy.
Through its design, Rx Kids is delivered in a dignified and efficient way. The program is made possible by a partnership between private philanthropy and public investment from the State of Michigan. In an historic move, Michigan leveraged the flexibility of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant dollars to support this novel effort, which has become a model for the nation. The state has allocated TANF funding to support five years of the program in Flint, and recently added dollars to expand the program to other cities which could launch as early as 2025.
This document describes the nuts and bolts of how to access TANF funds to support an Rx Kids program, and how state departments of human services can protect other social benefits from being impacted by Rx Kids cash prescriptions. It is a “living document” that will be updated with time. In brief, states can use TANF funding to implement an Rx Kids program by replicating the prescribed steps outlined in the Rx Kids Policy Playbook.
TANF funding is used for Rx Kids through a mechanism referred to as “non-recurrent short-term benefits” (NRST) that can be used to deliver up to four months of cash payments to families experiencing an acute economic hardship. Building on research that finds the months surrounding childbirth to be when poverty hits an all-time high during the life course, Rx Kids defines the end of pregnancy and childbirth as a period of acute economic hardship for families.
NRST payments are not considered formal cash assistance by TANF, and do not trigger time limits or work requirements. They can be made concurrently with cash assistance and other benefits and can be given to non-TANF participants.