Policymakers routinely make decisions with long-term consequences, often before the full effects of existing programs and policies are understood. Do early childhood safety-net programs shape outcomes years later in adulthood? Do student support programs continue to improve economic mobility long after graduation? And when new policies such as congestion pricing or emergency rental assistance are introduced, how quickly can we learn whether they are achieving their intended goals?
Arnold Ventures’ (AV) Evidence & Evaluation team supports rigorous research designed to answer those questions. Through the Building Evidence and Strengthening Evidence RFPs, AV recently funded 16 new studies spanning Career Pathways, Contraceptive Care and Access, Higher Education, Housing, Public Finance, and Regulatory Policy. These studies illustrate how rigorous causal research can help decision-makers better understand what works, for whom, and under what conditions.
Several of the newly funded studies will examine whether programs that showed promise in the short term continue to generate benefits years later. Others will evaluate major policy changes as they unfold, generating evidence that can inform decisions in real time.
Tracing the Long Reach of Safety Net Programs
Programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, refundable tax credits, and Medicaid are meant to help families through hard times. A central question for both budget writers and health policymakers is what that early support means decades later.
Margot Jackson of Brown University, Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution, and Taryn Morrissey of American University are conducting a quasi-experimental study of the long-term effects of receiving these programs in early childhood. By leveraging differences in the generosity of states’ safety nets, the team will estimate the combined and independent effects of these programs, including Medicaid, on public assistance use in early adulthood.
“Understanding the long-term impact of policies is crucial for promoting fiscal stability in government and advancing economic mobility. Children exposed to the post-welfare reform social safety net have now reached adulthood, making it possible to examine the impacts on the next generation of government assistance programs meant to reduce poverty and promote economic self-sufficiency. We hope that our findings will provide useful evidence on the budgetary impact of childhood investments.”
- Margot Jackson, Brown University
Examining Lasting Impacts on College Completion and Economic Mobility
Long-term follow-up studies can also help determine whether educational interventions deliver benefits that extend beyond the classroom. The City University of New York’s Accelerate, Complete, Engage (ACE) program was designed to help students persist through college and complete a bachelor’s degree. Evidence from the original RCT found that ACE substantially increased four- and five-year graduation rates.
Veronica Minaya and Diana Strumbos are now examining whether those educational gains led to broader improvements in participants’ lives. Their long-term follow-up study will assess impacts on degree completion, employment, and earnings up to eight years after randomization. The findings will help policymakers and higher education leaders better understand whether ACE’s impacts on college completion translate into lasting labor market gains.
Measuring Long-Term Workforce Outcomes After Injury and Illness
When a worker becomes injured or ill, the weeks and months that follow often determine whether they will remain connected to the workforce in the long-term. The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) programs used stay-at-work and return-to-work strategies that aimed to help workers in Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, and Vermont navigate employment during or after recovery and reduce their reliance on federal disability programs.
Yonatan Ben-Shalom and Ankita Patnaik of Mathematica are leading a long-term follow-up of a randomized controlled trial that assigned nearly 13,000 workers across the five states to either RETAIN services or a control group. The new study will measure the programs’ long-term impacts on participants’ employment and earnings up to three years after they enrolled in the programs.
Testing Policies in Real Time
Understanding whether policy impacts persist over time is a critical part of building evidence. But policymakers often cannot wait decades for answers. Several of the newly funded studies will evaluate major policy changes as they are implemented, generating timely evidence on questions that decision-makers are confronting right now.
One such policy is New York City’s congestion pricing program, the first large-scale congestion pricing system in the United States. Beginning in January 2025, vehicles are charged a toll to enter a designated zone in an effort to ease traffic. Transportation officials in other cities are watching closely, and the program’s effects on how people get around remain an open question.
Candace Brakewood, Luiz Lima, and Matthew Davis of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Jonathan Peters of the City University of New York are conducting a quasi-experimental study of the program’s impact on public transit. Drawing on several methods, the team will estimate how the toll affected ridership across the subway, bus, and regional rail systems during its first year. The results will offer evidence for the many cities considering similar transportation policies.
“We hope that this study will provide important insights about the impacts on transit ridership levels that will help transportation agencies and urban planners in other cities considering congestion pricing programs better plan for demand shifts and prepare for changes to the transportation system.”
- Candace Brakewood, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Another example is understanding the impacts of rental assistance programs. Policymakers increasingly provide emergency rental assistance to prevent eviction and homelessness, but rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of these programs remains limited. For a family behind on rent, a single missed payment can begin a chain of events that ends in eviction or even homelessness. Denver County’s Temporary Rental and Utility Assistance program (TRUA) tries to interrupt that chain. It offers eligible households up to six months of help covering back rent, current rent, one future month of rent, and the fees that accumulate during the eviction process.
Elizabeth Linos of Harvard University is leading a randomized controlled trial of the TRUA program. Over a two-year period, the study will assign all eligible households that apply for TRUA each month to either a group offered rental assistance or a control group that is not. It will measure effects on eviction filings and homelessness. As cities and states weigh how best to spend limited housing dollars, the findings will provide evidence as to whether this kind of emergency assistance keeps families stably housed.
List of All Newly Funded Studies
The studies highlighted above provide a snapshot of the types of questions AV seeks to answer through its Evidence & Evaluation portfolio. The full list of the 16 recently funded studies is provided below. These studies illustrate the breadth of questions AV supports, from understanding the long-run impacts of childhood investments, employment programs, and student supports to evaluating new policy innovations as they unfold. They address a broad set of programs and policies across social policy, including Career Pathways, Contraceptive Care and Access, Higher Education, Housing, Public Finance, and Regulatory Policy.
For more information, please see the Building Evidence and Strengthening Evidence RFPs on our Requests for Proposals page. Both aim to fund rigorous, causal research to expand and bolster the evidence base for promising social policies and programs. Funding for causal research related to the criminal justice system is offered through a separate RFP with a rolling deadline.
Career Pathways | Contraceptive Care | Higher Education
Housing/Homelessness | Public Finance | Regulatory Policy
Career Pathways
Long-Term Follow-Up of the Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) RCT
Grant Recipient: Mathematica Inc.
Principal Investigators: Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Mathematica, Ankita Patnaik, Mathematica
Term: 2026 – 2028
Summary: This project is a long-term follow-up of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of the Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) in Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, and Vermont. RETAIN helps workers in each state with newly acquired injuries or disabilities remain employed and reduce their reliance on federal disability programs by implementing early-intervention stay-at-work/return-to-work strategies.
This study will build off a previous RCT of RETAIN that randomly assigned nearly 13,000 eligible individuals across five states to either a treatment group that was offered RETAIN services or a control group that was not. Researchers will evaluate the impact on employment and annual earnings two and three years after randomization.
RCT of Career and Technical Education Schools in Ohio
Grant Recipient: Research Triangle Institute (RTI)
Principal Investigators: Snadra Staklis, RTI, Jay Plasman, Ohio State University, Arya Ansari, Ohio State University
Term: 2026 – 2031
Summary: This project is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of two career and technical education (CTE)-focused schools in Columbus City, Ohio. CTE-focused schools offer hands-on and classroom-based instruction aligned to specific occupational pathways, along with opportunities to earn industry-recognized credentials and participate in work-based learning.
This study will leverage an existing lottery system which will randomly assign approximately 13,500 students to either a treatment group that will receive admissions to a CTE-focused school, or a control group that will not receive admission to a CTE-focused school. Researchers will evaluate the impact on individual earnings six years after randomization (four years after high school graduation).
QED of Early College High Schools and P-TECH High Schools
Grant Recipient: University of Connecticut
Principal Investigator: Bokyung Kim, University of Connecticut, Chris Lim, University of Arizona
Term: 2026 – 2029
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) and Early College High School (ECHS). P-TECH schools integrate high school and college-level coursework with work-based learning opportunities (i.e. internships and apprenticeships), allowing students to earn a high school diploma and either an associate degree or industry credential within six years. ECHS campuses provide dual credit programs, allowing students to concurrently earn a high school degree and up to 60 college credits. Both programs are provided at no cost to students. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design, the study will estimate effects on students’ high school completion, postsecondary enrollment and completion, employment, and earnings.
QED of Career and Technical Education in Generalized High School Settings
Grant Recipient: Boston College
Principal Investigator: Shaun Dougherty, Boston College
Term: 2026 – 2027
Summary: This project is a two-part quasi-experimental study to evaluate career and technical education (CTE) programs in generalized high schools in Massachusetts. Comprehensive schools are those that do not specialize in CTE programs and can attract students that may not initially plan to pursue a skills-based pathways prior to high school. As a result, the programs are less selective and more representative. Using multiple methods (difference-in-discontinuities based on standardized test scores, difference-in-differences), the study will estimate effects on lower-achieving students’ (i) take-up of CTE programs and (ii) postsecondary completion and earnings.
Contraceptive Choice and Access
QED of Pharmacist-Prescribed Hormonal Contraception on Contraceptive Access
Grant Recipient: American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences
Term: 2026 - 2027
Principal Investigator(s): Aditi Pathak, American Institutes for Research
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of pharmacist-prescribed hormonal contraceptive policy reforms. As of 2025, 35 states and the District of Columbia have passed policies that permit pharmacists to prescribe hormonal contraceptives directly to patients without requiring a physician visit. Using a difference-in-differences design, the study will leverage the staggered rollout of these policies across states to estimate effects of different policies on contraceptive access among Medicaid recipients.
Higher Education
Long-Term Follow-Up of the City University of New York (CUNY) Accelerate, Complete, Engage (ACE) program RCT
Grant Recipient: Research Foundation of the City University of New York
Principal Investigators: Veronica Minaya, Community College Research Center, Diana Strumbos, ASAP National Replication Collaborative
Term: 2026 – 2028
Summary: This project is a long-term follow-up of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of the City University of New York (CUNY) Accelerate, Complete, Engage (ACE) program. The ACE program is a comprehensive student support initiative modeled on the highly successful CUNY Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), adapted for a four-year college context.
This study will build off a previous RCT of CUNY ACE that randomly assigned 570 eligible students to either a treatment group that was offered ACE supports or a control group that was not offered ACE supports. Researchers will evaluate the impact on degree completion, employment, and earnings five and eight years after randomization.
QED of Community College Baccalaureates in Washington State
Grant Recipient: Northwestern University
Term: 2026 - 2027
Principal Investigator(s): Julia Turner, Northwestern University, Kirabo Jackson, Northwestern University
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) introduction and expansion in Washington state. CCB authorization allows community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees directly rather than requiring students to transfer to a four-year institution. Using an instrumented difference-in-differences design, the study will leverage variation in the distance to the nearest CCB program and the staggered rollout of CCB programs across the state to estimate effects on bachelor’s degree completion and quarterly earnings.
Housing/Homelessness
RCT of Temporary Rental Assistance in Denver
Grant Recipient: President and Fellows of Harvard College
Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Linos, Harvard University
Term: 2026 – 2028
Summary: This project is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of Denver County’s Temporary Rental and Utility Assistance (TRUA) program. The TRUA program provides eligible households with up to six months of assistance to cover rental arrears, current rent, and up to one future month of rent as well as fees incurred in the eviction process.
This study will randomly assign approximately 5,400 eligible households to either a treatment group that will be offered rental assistance or a control group that will not be offered rental assistance. Researchers will evaluate the impact on eviction filings and homelessness 12 months after randomization.
RCT of Low Cost Information Interventions for Free Legal Representation
Grant Recipient: Regents of the University of Michigan
Principal Investigators: Justin Holz, University of Michigan, Sally Sadoff, University of California, San Diego
Term: 2026 – 2028
Summary: This project is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of providing individuals at risk of eviction with information on the benefits of legal representation in Dallas. Researchers will work with the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center (DEAC), which currently provides free legal representation to tenants in eviction court.
This study will randomly assign approximately 14,000 eligible individuals to either a treatment group that will receive enhanced information about free legal aid, including win rates and homelessness rates for individuals that attend court with legal representation, or a control group that will receive DEAC’s standard message about free legal aid. Researchers will evaluate the impact on eviction rates.
QED of Climate-Resilient Building Codes
Grant Recipient: Resources for the Future, Inc.
Term: 2026 - 2027
Principal Investigator(s): Margaret Walls, Resources for the Future, Yanjun (Penny) Liao, Resources for the Future, Hannah Druckenmiller, California Institute of Technology
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of wildfire-resistant codes in California and flood-resistant building codes across the United States. These building codes are laws that set minimum requirements for how homes must be designed and built, with the goal of reducing the impacts of natural hazards and promoting climate adaptation. Using a difference-in-differences design, the study will estimate effects on new housing supply and prices.
Public Finance
QED of Federal and State Capital Gains Tax Reforms
Grant Recipient: Regents of the University of California, Santa Barbara
Term: 2026 - 2029
Principal Investigator(s): Alisa Tazhitdinova, UC Santa Barbara
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of capital gains tax reforms. The study will leverage changes in two federal tax reforms—the 2012 “American Taxpayer Relief Act” and the 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”—and state-level reforms in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kansas, and North Carolina. Using a difference-in-differences design, the study will estimate effects on financial capital gains in the short- (1-2 years after policy change) and long-term (3-5 years after policy change).
QED of Childhood Safety Net Programs on Adult Use of Public Assistance
Grant Recipient: Brown University
Principal Investigators: Margot Jackson, Brown University
Tara Watson, Brookings Institution
Taryn Morrissey, American University
Term: 2026 - 2028
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the long-term impact of early childhood receipt of safety net programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, federal and state refundable tax credits, and Medicaid. The study will leverage variation in safety net generosity across states to estimate the combined and independent impact of these safety net programs on public assistance receipt in early adulthood.
QED of Federal Corporate Charitable Giving Tax Reforms
Grant Recipient: University of Southern California
Principal Investigator: Nicolas J. Duquette, University of Southern California
Term: 2026 – 2028
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact changes in tax deductibility on corporate charitable giving. The study will leverage tax changes in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which narrowed the deductibility of corporate charitable giving by requiring a minimum amount of charitable giving before a firm can take a deduction. Specifically, under OBBBA, corporations can only deduct charitable contributions over one percent of their income. Using a difference-in-differences design, the study will estimate effects on corporate charitable contributions one year after legislation passage.
Regulatory Policy
QED of the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule
Grant Recipient: California Institute of Technology
Term: 2026 - 2027
Principal Investigator(s): Hannah Druckenmiller, California Institute of Technology, Joseph Shaprio, University of California, Berkeley, Charles Taylor, Harvard University
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of the Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR). In 2020, the NWPR lifted regulations for development around wetlands and other bodies of water in the United States. Using a difference-in-differences design, the study will estimate effects on new housing supply and property values.
QED of New York City’s Congestion Pricing Program
Grant Recipient: University of Tennessee
Term: 2026 - 2027
Principal Investigator(s): Candace Brakewood, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Luiz Lima, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Jonathan Peters, City University of New York
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of New York City’s congestion pricing program. In January 2025, New York City implemented the first large-scale congestion pricing program in the US, which charges vehicles a toll to enter the “Congestion Pricing Zone” in an effort to reduce vehicular traffic. Using multiple methods (regression discontinuity in time, difference-in-differences, and synthetic control), the study will estimate the impact on public transit ridership across the subway, bus, and regional rail systems one year after policy implementation.
QED of Local Solar and Wind Ordinances
Grant Recipient: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
Principal Investigator: Gaurav Doshi, Georgia Institute of Technology
Term: 2026 – 2027
Summary: This project is a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of solar and wind ordinances. Local ordinances are county and township-level regulations that limit where and how renewable projects may be built. Using a difference-in-differences design, the study will leverage the staggered rollout of ordinances across counties across the United States to estimate effects on the number and capacity of new renewable energy projects at the county level.
