A Michigan program that gives cash payments to pregnant people and mothers of newborn children could be expanding with the help of the state Legislature.
A bill to increase state support for the program, called Rx Kids, is scheduled to receive a hearing before the state Senate Housing and Human Services Committee at noon on Tuesday.
Dr. Mona Hanna is the program’s director and the associate dean of public health at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine. She said families that Rx Kids has helped have used that money to get necessary health care.
“A massive improvement in prenatal care utilization, meaning families are going to prenatal care earlier, they’re going more often. And because of that, we’re actually seeing improvements in even birth outcomes, improvements in things like birth weight, and a decrease in prematurity and less NICU admissions,” Hanna said.
Rx Kids currently serves families in low-income areas like Flint, Clare County, and the Eastern Upper Peninsula. They get $1,500 during pregnancy and $500 a month during the baby's first months of life, with no strings attached, and no income cap.
Hanna said it runs efficiently with relatively low administrative costs.
“We have built a plug-and-play program. When we launched Rx Kids in Flint in January 2024, we were just figuring out how to do it. It was never going to be just about Flint, it was about building a model that we could quickly scale and replicate, and that’s exactly what we have done,” Hanna said.
Funding for the program comes from a mix of public and private dollars.
In Michigan, Rx Kids has seen support from across the political spectrum, including from supporters of free market policies.
But a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research raised at least some doubts about the effectiveness of direct cash payments. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, may have skewed those results.
Hanna mentioned that and other confounding factors, like cash payments not keeping up with inflation, and other direct payments given to Americans as part of COVID-19 stimulus checks. She defended the effectiveness of cash payments, noting many other countries already provide money to parents.
“That massive global evidence shows significant impacts when it comes to family financial stability, health impacts, child development, and the list goes on. And the evidence is strongest when you give families with the youngest children cash,” Hanna said.
