How do holistic wrap-around anti-poverty programs affect employment and individualized outcomes?

A new wave of social service programs aims to build a pathway out of poverty by helping clients define their own goals and then supporting them flexibly and intensively over multiple years to meet those goals. We conduct a randomized controlled trial of one such program, Bridges to Success. Two cohorts of participants were randomly assigned to intensive, holistic, wrap-around services that typically last two years versus a control offered help with an immediate need. Since the intervention has a clear goal of exiting poverty but is also holistic, we pre-specified both employment and non-employment outcomes. The measured treatment effect on employment three years after random assignment is 9 ± 9 percentage points (pp). The proportion of people reporting high housing quality after one year has a treatment effect of −2 ± 12 pp. In exploratory analysis, additional evidence suggests a stronger case for effects on employment than non-employment outcomes. Employment after one year shows a treatment effect of 10 ± 8 pp. Pooling our data with the most similar existing study increases precision relative to either study alone and indicates that such programs likely generate moderately positive employment effects. On the other hand, we find little evidence that intensive, holistic services affect any of a wide variety of other non-employment outcomes beyond housing, even when other areas of life are participants’ primary goals.