Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha leads the Rx Kids initiative in Flint, Michigan, which gives monthly payments to families until their child’s first birthday. It’s the first citywide cash transfer program to support babies in the U.S. (Photo courtesy of the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health at Michigan State University)
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who helped uncover the Flint water crisis, is leading a program that provides expecting mothers in the city with $1,500 mid-pregnancy and $500 per month postpartum until the baby turns 1, Michigan Advance reports. “When you’re born into and when you grow up in poverty, it really alters your entire life course. So for a long time, I had wished for the antidote — the prescription — to prescribe away poverty, and that’s how this idea came together,” Hanna-Attisha said.
Rx Kids in Flint, Michigan, is the first universal cash transfer program of its kind in the nation and expected to serve up to 1,200 families a year, according to the Advance.
The program has raised $43 million and supports more than 500 moms, Hanna-Attisha said. Funding for the initiative came from a $15 million Charles Stewart Mott Foundation grant and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, a federal block grant, said Luke Shaefer, co-director of Rx Kids and the director of Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.
“Everybody knows having a baby is expensive, and so that perfect storm means families are the poorest in that first year,” Shaefer said.
Enrollment for the citywide cash payment program, geared toward improving infant and maternal health among low-income communities, opened on Jan. 10.
Hanna-Attisha told the Advance one family has used the money to buy a baby monitor, a car seat, diapers and establish a child savings account. The program’s leaders hope to expand the initiative to Detroit, Dearborn and other cities across the state.
The expanded child tax credit during the pandemic reduced food and financial instability, and popularized the concept of programs that give cash directly to families that need it most.
“We lifted millions and millions of children out of poverty. We saw the lowest rates of families saying they were struggling to put food on the table that we’ve ever seen in the nation’s history,” Shaefer said. “Credit scores hit their all-time high at the end of 2021. The number of Americans with bad credit in particular, fell to an all-time low.”
But some politicians are pushing back against these efforts, Stateline reports, and attempting to block them in at least six states. GOP lawmakers are working to outlaw ‘basic income’ programs, like South Dakota Sen. John Wiik, who brought legislation to ban cities and counties in the state from creating them.
The debate is likely to crop up more often as Democratic officials work to expand pilots, according to Stateline.
