Research to Impact: 2024 Highlights
In 2024, we updated our mission and values to drive home the impact we seek to achieve. The following highlights illustrate how Urban’s research helped people and communities thrive this year.
Driving Solutions That Create Lasting Impact
Urban’s research helps ensure that changemakers have the data and evidence to shape solutions that work.
- Supportive housing: Building on the significant impact of a trailblazing supportive housing program Urban helped design and evaluate, our experts are now assessing the City and County of Denver’s effort to reduce arrest rates, health care usage, and associated Medicaid costs by providing supportive housing to people experiencing chronic homelessness. Our early findings show promise: participants who have spent decades on the street entered permanent housing, and 82 percent remained stably housed after the first six months of the program.
- Medical debt: Some 15 million Americans stand to benefit from Urban research that helped shape a new federal rule removing medical debt from credit reports. Our research informed state-level reforms in New York and beyond, demonstrating how data-driven policy adjustments can improve financial security and economic opportunity.
“Thank you for this new tool! We always appreciate Urban Institute’s research—it is critical for our advocacy work. I promptly shared information about this tool with advocates around the country and other communities working on medical debt and debt collection policy issues.”
April Kuehnhoff, senior attorney at National Consumer Law Center
Improving Lives and Increasing Upward Mobility
With Urban’s trusted insights in hand, leaders can take powerful ideas from inception to implementation.
- Apprenticeships: In 2024, Urban launched the National Apprenticeship Resource Hub, which helps businesses, educators, and workforce leaders create or improve apprenticeship programs. Developed with industry experts and the US Department of Labor, the hub’s National Occupational Frameworks provide ready-to-use training plans for fast-growing occupations. Our Registered Apprenticeship Standards Library also offers hundreds of approved occupational standards across sectors and states. As the only resource of its kind in the country, Urban’s hub streamlines apprenticeship design for leaders while maintaining industry training standards.
- TANF funds to support newborns: Urban advised Michigan’s Rx Kids leaders on federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) policies as they successfully made the case to the Administration for Children and Families to use TANF funds alongside philanthropic dollars to support the program. Rx Kids gives unrestricted cash payments to every expectant mother and new baby in Flint, Michigan, for the baby’s first 12 months. In its inaugural year, the program enrolled 1,340 families and 1,101 babies, helped 88 percent of moms make ends meet, and helped 67 percent of moms improve their health and their children’s health. Rx Kids is now expanding to other low-income Michigan communities.
- Head Start improvements: Urban was cited in the Final Rule on the Head Start Program Performance Standards, which made regulatory changes to support and stabilize the Head Start workforce and improve services to children and families. Among other Urban research, the rule referenced our work on Washington, DC’s pioneering strategy to provide pay equity to early childhood teachers in licensed child care programs—a strategy that led to greater teacher retention and more attention to children.
“As a leader in understanding TANF policies, Urban brings unparalleled expertise in applying policy knowledge to practical solutions for families.”
Dr. Mona Hanna, director of Rx Kids, pediatrician, and director of the Michigan State University-Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative
Empowering Our Partners to Pilot and Test What Works
In cities across the country, local governments and nonprofits want to know if their programs are making a difference.
- Cash assistance: Urban’s evaluation of Austin’s guaranteed income pilot program and evidence on the benefits of unconditional cash assistance to families played a key role in informing the City Council’s decision to reauthorize the pilot and establish a funding mechanism to help stabilize residents experiencing housing insecurity.
- Public benefits and tax credits: Millions of dollars go unused annually by Philadelphians eligible to receive public benefits. The City of Philadelphia and the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey’s Knowledge Center asked Urban to evaluate their initiative to improve residents’ access to these benefits. Urban’s research contributed to motivating and informing a 2024 William Penn Foundation grant program that will help local organizations connect families with young children to public benefits and tax credits worth at least $75 million by 2035. Through the effort, an estimated 25,000 Philadelphia families could receive the support for which they’re eligible.
“[Urban’s] comprehensive analysis of the pilot influenced the City of Austin’s decision to launch Family Stabilization Grants, extending direct cash investments to support families facing hardship. The Urban Institute’s contributions to this pilot will continue to benefit Austin families for years to come.”
Jesús Gerena, CEO of UpTogether
Providing Insights for Effective Policies
We believe data and evidence are critical for making effective decisions and inspiring change for the better.
- Tax policy: Urban researchers provide trusted policy analysis that shapes debates in Congress. Our Tax Policy Center experts demonstrate the real-world impact of potential tax reforms on working families. For example, we found that 19 million children would be eligible for the child tax credit if Congress eliminated the credit’s refundability cap, a number that lawmakers and advocacy groups cited frequently.
- Child care subsidies: Urban’s research helped inform a new child care subsidy enrollment process that will make it easier for almost 800,000 families and more than 1 million children to have affordable quality care. Decades of Urban research on child care subsidies helped lay the groundwork for regulatory changes to the 2024 Child Care and Development Fund, which further simplifies the enrollment process and takes steps to stabilize and support more than 200,000 child care providers nationwide.
- Student debt relief: Urban’s research informed the national conversation on student loan debt, repayment, and forgiveness. Our experts laid out who would benefit from the College Cost Reduction Act and the Saving on a Valuable Education plan. We analyzed how repayment plans work, provided evidence-informed recommendations for creating a more efficient system, and testified on borrowers’ dissatisfaction with the federal student loan program and policy improvements.
View next section