How Home Visits and Tax Credits Together May Strengthen Struggling Families

Poverty in the United States falls hardest on the youngest members of society. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the national child poverty rate stood at 16 percent in 2022, nearly four percentage points higher than the overall national poverty rate, and in Michigan the figure climbed to 18 percent, the highest in the Midwest. Decades of developmental research have established that growing up in economic hardship shapes psychological, social, and physical health trajectories across the entire lifespan, and that the chronic stress of scarcity is tightly linked to elevated risks of adverse childhood experiences, including parental mental health struggles, substance use, intimate partner violence, and child maltreatment. Against this backdrop, a team of researchers at the University of Michigan asked a deceptively simple question: what happens when families already receiving home-visiting services are also given intensive, one-on-one help claiming a tax credit worth thousands of dollars? Their answer, published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, suggests that the combination may do far more than pad a bank account. It may reshape how families relate, communicate, and plan for the future.

The intervention at the heart of the study was the Michigan EITC Access Project, a partnership between the University of Michigan, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Children Trust Michigan, and the Office of Equity and Minority Health. The project targeted the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable federal credit for low- and moderate-income workers that policy simulations have identified as the single most powerful tool among major U.S. benefit programs for reducing child poverty. In 2023, a single parent with three or more children earning up to 56,838 dollars could receive a maximum credit of 7,430 dollars, and Michigan layered on a state-level supplement that was expanded in 2023 from 6 percent to 30 percent of the federal amount. Yet roughly 20 percent of eligible taxpayers never claim the credit, leaving an estimated 7.3 billion dollars unclaimed each tax year. Research points to lack of awareness as a central barrier: only two in five individuals with less than a high school education have ever heard of the EITC, and others are deterred by fears of penalties related to citizenship status or prior filing compliance.

To close that gap, the project augmented Parents as Teachers, an evidence-based home-visiting model that promotes early child development and prevents child maltreatment, with a financial empowerment layer. Home visitors were trained in motivational interviewing techniques for discussing economic issues, learned local EITC eligibility requirements and resources, and worked with families one-on-one to identify barriers to claiming the credit. They arranged appointments at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites, which provide free tax filing help to low-income filers. Beyond the tax credit itself, visitors facilitated open-ended conversations about economic needs using Your Money, Your Goals, a financial empowerment toolkit from the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau comprising booklets, companion guides, and online resources. The frequency of these discussions was deliberately flexible, with visitors introducing financial topics early in the home-visiting schedule and revisiting them at follow-up visits, supported by role-playing exercises and training from the local university extension office.

The new study examined the perceptions of parents who received this enhanced model. Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 32 parents of children aged one to 16 across nine Michigan counties, from the Upper Peninsula’s Baraga, Houghton, and Keweenaw to urban Wayne and Washtenaw in the southeast. Thirty of the participants were women; 56 percent identified as White, 31 percent as Black, and the remainder as Asian, Latine or Hispanic, or Multiracial. Master’s-level research assistants conducted the interviews over Zoom, with sessions lasting five to 25 minutes and averaging 13. Participants received a 25-dollar gift card, transcripts were de-identified, and geographic details were aggregated to protect confidentiality. The coding team, working in Atlas.ti, used an abductive approach that blended existing theory on economic hardship and family protective factors with themes emerging directly from the data, iterating toward consensus and engaging in peer debriefing to guard against researcher bias.

Thematic analysis revealed six domains in which parents perceived the program had strengthened family well-being: social connection, family-focused purchases, stress management, family cohesion, shared financial knowledge and values, and multigenerational financial empowerment. The first of these, social connection, emerged as the foundation on which everything else rested. Parents described trusting, empathic relationships with their home visitors that functioned as genuine social support. One mother in South Central Michigan spoke of the reassurance of having an extra source of advice during difficult moments, while another in Eastern Michigan, coping with depression, said she had been able to confide in her visitor, whom she described as a wonderful lady. A single mother in Eastern Michigan said the program gave her strategies and a person to talk to so she no longer felt so alone, and a mother of three in Southeast Michigan said the program made her feel more at home, as if the visitors treated her like family. That trust, the researchers note, is precisely the engagement mechanism through which motivational interviewing operates, and it appears to have normalized conversations about money that might otherwise feel stigmatizing.

The tangible benefits were equally striking. Parents described using the Your Money, Your Goals materials to budget, set savings goals, and plan purchases that directly served their children: family vacations, date nights, recreational activities, and higher-quality, more nutritious food. One mother of two in South Central Michigan described working through a checklist with her home visitor to put money aside for a family vacation. Others reported that the EITC itself gave them flexibility to invest in their families after covering bills, whether by funding a special trip or by keeping up with a car payment that ensured children arrived at school and childcare on time. Prior research has shown that EITC recipients typically direct the credit toward debt, bills, and emergencies, but the parents in this study, equipped with budgeting and goal-setting tools, emphasized balancing immediate obligations with deliberate investments in their children’s development, a pattern the authors suggest may be unique to pairing benefits access with financial education.

Stress reduction emerged as perhaps the most psychologically consequential theme. Parents reported worrying less about money, feeling calmer, and experiencing a sense of security that made, in the words of one mother of four, a huge difference. A mother of two in Northern Michigan described how help with tax benefits and connections to other services eased the burden of a period when her family was navigating health insurance problems with three children and only one income, leaving her feeling less stressed, happier, and more prepared for life. Notably, even parents who did not see a direct reduction in financial burdens reported lower stress, attributing the change to a greater sense of awareness and control. One mother said the program helped her understand how to manage money against fluctuating income, while another described how breaking the daunting task of rebuilding credit into small, achievable steps made her feel less overwhelmed. These accounts align closely with the family stress model, which holds that economic hardship erodes parenting quality through its effect on parental stress, and with evidence that financial literacy is linked to lower financial anxiety and fewer mental health problems.

Those reductions in stress appeared to cascade into stronger family relationships. Parents said they argued and bickered less around their children once tax season felt manageable, and some reported feeling more respected as financial partners by their spouses. A mother of two in South Central Michigan explained that budgeting work with her home visitor left her so much less stressed that she no longer needed to retreat to another room for 30 minutes to compose herself, and could instead take her children to the park. Others said the credit reduced the number of hours they needed to work away from their children, creating more quality time, a finding the authors flag as noteworthy because prior quantitative studies had found minimal effects of the EITC on parents’ time investments in enriching activities with children. The program also opened conversations about money within families: one mother said her partner began telling her exactly what he earned, something he had never done before, and others described sharing tax credit information with younger sisters or modeling minimal borrowing and careful credit use for their daughters.

Perhaps the most forward-looking theme was multigenerational financial empowerment. Parents described opening savings accounts for their children, setting annual contributions to college funds, and coaching children on the value of money, in one case walking a child through how long it would take to re-earn birthday and Christmas money before spending it. Research on parental financial socialization shows that parents exert a greater influence on children’s financial behavior than peers or formal financial education, and that children who receive financial education from parents are more likely to exhibit healthy financial behaviors in early adulthood, suggesting the program’s effects could compound across generations. The authors argue that their findings point to a broader lesson: benefits access alone may not be enough. A recent Michigan study using public service announcements to boost EITC uptake found no significant improvements in financial stress or health, and a study in England identified trust between parents and practitioners as the key factor in delivering financial well-being support, finding that light-touch signposting fell short. Embedding financial empowerment within trusted, existing home-visiting relationships, the researchers conclude, may destigmatize money conversations, address immediate needs, and build the financial efficacy, mental health, and resilience that allow families to interrupt the cycle of poverty for good.

Subject of Research: A home-visiting financial education supplement to the Earned Income Tax Credit and its effects on family well-being

Article Title: Building Stability: A Home-Visiting Financial Education Supplement to Enhance Family Well-Being

Article References: Chang, O. D., Park, Y., Maguire-Jack, K., & Jean Francois, N. (2026). Building Stability: A Home-Visiting Financial Education Supplement to Enhance Family Well-Being. Journal of Child and Family Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-026-03381-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10826-026-03381-3

Keywords: Earned Income Tax Credit, home visiting, financial empowerment, family well-being, child poverty, parental stress, Parents as Teachers, motivational interviewing, financial literacy, family cohesion, adverse childhood experiences, Michigan