Signal 1: A Data-Driven Approach to Poverty

New York City spends considerable amounts of time and resources providing social services to low-income residents. Much of this work conforms to the traditional programming model, where a program is designed, some eligibility criteria is defined, clients’ eligibility is assessed, and then clients are enrolled in the program. Data are collected about client eligibility, enrollment and completion dates, with perhaps some follow-up data collected at measured intervals subsequent to program completion.

Recently, initiatives like Give Directly and Universal Basic Income have been experimenting with less paternalistic, more direct models. One approach I find compelling is the Family Independence Initiative, which marries direct support with data and technology that allows participating families to share information with each other. Participants provide data through an online tracking and journaling system, allowing the FII to collect more data than the traditional social service model. And the data families provide can help policy-makers focus on designing solutions to the systemic barriers that the low-income families face, like inadequate public transportation. This way the policy agenda is determined by the data, and not vice versa (Bornstein, 2018).

References

Bornstein, D. (2018, -01–20T06:52:45.893Z). When families lead themselves out of poverty. The New York Times Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/opinion/poverty-family-independence-initiative.html