Tightening income documentation in a means-tested program: who stays away?

Programs using means tests to identify low-income households face a trade-off between promoting access and ensuring program integrity. The authors use a comparison-district design to estimate the effects of a pilot program to improve the accuracy of the process of certifying students for free or reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch Program. This pilot program required households to provide income documentation with their applications for these benefits.

Using propensity scoring to estimate program-related subgroup impacts in experimental program evaluations.

This article discusses the use of propensity scoring in experimental program evaluations to estimate impacts for subgroups defined by program features and participants' program experiences. The authors discuss estimation issues and provide specification tests. They also discuss the use of an overlooked data collection design--obtaining predictions that program intake staff make about applicants' likely program assignments and experiences--that could improve the quality of matched comparison samples.

Community case management for former jail inmates: its impacts on rearrest, drug use, and HIV risk.

Dramatically increasing incarceration rates in the United States have led to large concentrations of formerly imprisoned people in poverty-stricken urban areas. Therefore, identifying ways to help inmates who exhibit multiple, serious problems and who are at great risk of experiencing poor postrelease outcomes is especially important to urban communities, as well as to service providers and policymakers concerned about these communities. Our research provides evidence about the effectiveness of one strategy, called Health Link, which recruited adult women and adolescent men while they were incarcerated in a New York City jail and offered case management services during the especially challenging first year after release.