Does Guaranteed Income Build Assets for Black Women? Evidence from the In Her Hands Program

This work was originally published by scholars with the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. The institute integrated with Washington University’s Center for Social Development in January 2025.

This study provides evidence that guaranteed income programs like In Her Hands—which focuses on women living in majority-Black and high-poverty Georgia neighborhoods—are providing families with a diverse array of financial benefits, which may be attributable in part to the agency and flexibility offered through cash support. Families are using the payments to catch up on their bills, improve their debt situations, build their short-term savings, and even start saving for long-term goals that are important factors in emerging from intergenerational cycles of poverty, such as paying for higher education for themselves or their children.

This is one in a series or briefs developed in conjunction with the Financial Independence policy conference held on September 16 and 17, 2024, in Washington, DC. The convening was hosted by the Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, the Center for Social Development, the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania, and Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan. Support for the conference and subsequent publications came from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work. For the conference report and links to other briefs in this series, visit https://dx.doi.org/10.7302/25210

Project: Workforce Economic Inclusion and Mobility