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Opportunity NYC

Family Rewards
Targeting six selected high-poverty community districts in New York City, the Family Rewards initiative uses privately-raised money to encourage and support parents and children to invest in their own future. The Program offers a comprehensive package of incentives to participants, including:

  • Education incentives to help children advance academically
  • Health incentives to promote preventive health care
  • Work and Training incentives to reward adults for maintaining full-time employment and advancing their careers
The goal of this program is to provide families living in persistent poverty with additional resources – money – that they earn by exhibiting behaviors that focus on the future. Families will have the freedom to use these resources in the fashion that best meets their immediate and future needs to help rise out of poverty. Overall, 4,778 families (with 5,051 adults and 11,489 children) are in the study sample, with half assigned to the program group and half assigned to the control group.

Work Rewards
The adult-focused study, Work Rewards, is a privately funded initiative designed to test the effectiveness of an enhanced Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program and a workforce-focused Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) as strategies for increasing earnings, reducing poverty, and improving other outcomes for families. The demonstration will involve recipients of Housing Choice Vouchers administered by New York City’s two housing authorities: the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). The Work Rewards program engages about 2,500 participants.