The Resilience Factor

Cash As a Tool Towards Better Health for Young Families

In the newly released report, The Resilience Factor: Cash as a Tool Towards Better Health for Young Families, we argue that direct cash policies - from stimulus checks to guaranteed income programs to the Child Tax Credit - are critical investments in health. Too often the solution to a patient’s health challenge is not only a medical intervention but an economic one. These programs provide flexibility, dignity, and agency by allowing people to use their resources to best meet their needs, and assert health is a fundamental human right.

Yet in the United States, our health has been largely shaped by a prevailing economic paradigm that centers “free market” thinking and reinforces stratification and inequities by race, gender, and ethnicity. We see this in the excess death Americans experience compared to peer nations, especially among Black and Native Americans. We also see this in the maternal mortality crisis, which is especially dire for Black mothers across socioeconomic status. This system is underpinned by cultural narratives that perpetuate individualism and challenge deservingness.

To fix this broken system, we need intentional policies and governmental action guided by new economic thinking to ensure all people have the resources they need to lead healthy lives. 

This report is the result of deep collaboration between healthcare professionals, economic justice advocates, and policy strategists, led by the Economic Security Project (ESP). It reflects our shared analysis of—and our shared commitment to—advancing cash as a critical health intervention.

Cash programs alone cannot fix decades of bad policy and an economic system geared towards profit over people’s health and wellbeing. We need stronger labor laws to ensure all workers, including health and care workers, earn a living wage and have protections when they or their loved ones need care. We need reparative wealth-building policies, like baby bonds, that challenge existing economic and racial segregation. We need universal healthcare coverage and inclusive investments in our healthcare system to ensure people can access the care they need. But by empowering patients and practitioners, cash can be an essential part of the missing prescription for both patients and our system as a whole.

Healthcare practitioners can act now to show their support and join the fight for direct cash policies:

• Sign onto our national joint letter, created by the Economic Security Project and the Health and Political Economy Project, to support direct cash policies as good health policy. Then share it with your networks!
• Get connected to efforts in your state to expand cash transfer or strengthen access to flexible cash support by joining the Guaranteed Income Community of Practice (GICP).