Giving Compass' Take:

• Matt Barnum shares several studies that indicate that cash or benefits given to low-income families improve their kids' school performance. 

• How can funders boost achievement for low-income students at scale? 

• Learn about the social capital gap hurting low-income students. 

Want to boost test scores and increase graduation rates? Give low-income families benefits or money.

That’s the conclusion of a story we published looking at the link between anti-poverty programs and better outcomes for poor students in school. Along the way, we compiled a list of studies of anti-poverty programs and the effects on children and families. We’re providing that here as a reference; it also includes a handful of studies that go against the main trend. Our full story summarizes these results and also points to these studies’ limits.

This list is generally limited to those published in the last decade focusing on the U.S. (One paper focuses on Canada and two others that were published before 2008; these studies are included because they are mentioned in the original story.)

You can also reviews of similar research from the Brookings Institution, Future of Children, and London School of Economics, some of which Chalkbeat drew from for our own story.

Read the full article about students in poverty by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.