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

Generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, is characterized by excessive, difficult-to-control worry that interferes with daily functioning. Rates of anxiety have been rising in the United States, particularly among adults under fifty and among women, whose risk exceeds that of men. Worsening mental health among pregnant and parenting women of low socioeconomic status has raised alarms in the maternal health community, because untreated anxiety threatens both mothers and children. Yet scientists have struggled to identify modifiable, upstream drivers of anxiety in marginalized groups, and research explicitly linking manifestations of structural racism to GAD has remained rare. The SECURE investigators argued that residential eviction, which disproportionately affects Black women and children, is one such discernible consequence of structural racism, and that the specific experiences of Black women have been largely absent from the scientific record, a gap the researchers attribute in part to misogynoir, or the systematic dismissal of Black women’s testimony.

The SECURE Study recruited self-identified Black women aged eighteen to forty-five who were parents or had a parenting role and lived in Wayne, Oakland, or Macomb counties in Michigan. Between July 2021 and July 2024, participants completed online or telephone surveys, yielding a final sample of 1,428 women, a remarkable 91.1 percent response rate among confirmed eligible participants. Crucially, the study was designed as participatory action research: a Community Advisory Board of Black women local, national, and international leaders helped shape the survey questions in culturally appropriate language, interpreted the findings, and are named coauthors on the paper. This structure was not merely symbolic; it shaped how eviction itself was measured, distinguishing five separate exposures: eviction during childhood, ever experiencing a court-ordered eviction, ever experiencing an illegal eviction, a court-ordered eviction in the past two years, and an illegal eviction in the past two years.

In Michigan, a lawful eviction requires written notice of a lease violation, a court filing, a judicial eviction order, and a physical removal carried out by a court officer or sheriff. An illegal eviction bypasses all of these protections: the landlord or their representative simply forces a resident out. Anxieties were assessed with the GAD-7, a validated seven-item scale on which participants rated how often they were bothered by symptoms such as nervousness, uncontrollable worrying, restlessness, irritability, and fear that something awful might happen. The scale showed excellent internal consistency in this sample, and scores of fifteen or above, indicating severe symptoms, were analyzed as the outcome. Roughly one in three participants screened positive for moderate or severe anxiety symptoms in the previous two weeks, with about sixteen percent falling into the severe category.

The headline result emerged with striking clarity. In unadjusted analyses, all five eviction measures were associated with elevated risk of severe anxiety symptoms, with relative risks ranging from roughly 1.3 to 2.0. After statistical adjustment for age, income, marital status, education, employment, enrollment year, current housing tenure, and prior clinician-diagnosed anxiety and depression, most associations attenuated. But one held firm: women who reported an illegal eviction in the past two years had 46 percent higher risk of severe GAD symptoms than women with no such experience, a finding that remained statistically significant with a confidence interval of 1.03 to 2.07. A sensitivity analysis comparing women illegally evicted more than two years earlier against those with no lifetime history found no elevated risk, while recent illegal eviction conferred fifty-two percent higher risk, sharpening the picture of a potent, time-sensitive association that resembles an acute threat response rather than a lasting scar of past displacement.

The study’s design cannot prove causation, and the authors are careful on this point, acknowledging possible recall bias and the cross-sectional nature of the data. Yet they argue the estimate is likely conservative, given that half of the sample reported some eviction experience, that prior mental health diagnoses may themselves lie on the pathway between eviction and anxiety, and that self-report is the only feasible way to measure illegal eviction, since such displacements never enter court records. Notably, the researchers found no evidence that Black women are more likely to misremember major life events than other groups, undermining a common methodological objection to within-group research built on lived experience.

The qualitative arm of the study adds the texture that numbers alone cannot supply. Of the ninety-five women reporting a recent illegal eviction, seventy-seven also answered open-ended questions about why they were put out and what their landlords did. Thematic analysis of their responses revealed seven recurring themes. Reasons for illegal eviction included landlord conflict, abuse, and fraud, such as retaliation against tenants who filed discrimination complaints or who knew their rights; landlord neglect, including refusal to repair infestations and dangerous conditions; gentrification, property sales, and unaffordable rent increases; and family or neighborhood conflict. One participant described being deceived by a landlord who ‘came and lied to the police to remove us’ after a court had failed to displace her. Another, seven days late on rent, received a fraudulent notice that mimicked a court document and left within a week, unaware she had a right to stay.

The methods of displacement were often overtly coercive, fitting what researchers call ‘self-help’ eviction: changing the locks while tenants were away, shutting off water and utilities, removing belongings to the street, sending threats by text and email, calling police with false reports, and arriving with groups of people to intimidate. Participants described daily harassment, destroyed property, and inspections they could not refuse. The authors contend that such experiences produce exactly the cognitive conditions that sustain generalized anxiety: anticipatory worry, hypervigilance, an inability to plan, and a pervasive sense of ongoing threat. Because illegal evictions are sudden, violent, unpredictable, and offer no immediate legal recourse, they may generate an intolerable level of uncertainty, a known driver of GAD. The researchers go further, framing the incomplete enforcement of tenant protections as a form of state-sanctioned violence, and drawing a parallel to police brutality, which has likewise been linked to hypervigilance and anxiety in Black communities.

The implications reach well beyond psychology clinics. More than one in three participants carried a prior diagnosis of anxiety or depression, and even after adjusting for those diagnoses, the association between recent illegal eviction and severe symptoms remained strong. People with GAD face elevated risks of additional mental and physical health conditions, and identifying modifiable upstream causes is therefore a public health priority. The authors argue that addressing the dual crises of eviction and poor mental health among reproductive-age Black women is essential to maternal and child health equity, and they call for a layered response: emergency support and mutual aid for those experiencing illegal eviction, trauma-informed interventions, stronger enforcement of tenant rights, and structural solutions including policy change and government-funded reparations for descendants of enslaved people in the United States. As the first and most comprehensive study of its kind, built with rather than merely about the women it studied, the SECURE investigation transforms a largely invisible form of housing violence into measurable scientific evidence, and sends a clear signal that where eviction law ends and landlord whim begins, the mental health consequences are anything but abstract.

Subject of Research: Associations between illegal residential eviction and severe generalized anxiety disorder symptoms among reproductive-age Black women

Article Title: Illegal eviction and risk of severe anxiety disorder symptoms: Qualitative and quantitative data from the Social Epidemiology to Combat Unjust Residential Evictions (SECURE) study

Article References: Sealy-Jefferson, S., Ross, L. J., Mishra, S., Sanders, K., Anderson, T., Anderson-Mays, T., Oneal, R., & Jones-McBryde, C. (2026). Illegal eviction and risk of severe anxiety disorder symptoms: Qualitative and quantitative data from the Social Epidemiology to Combat Unjust Residential Evictions (SECURE) study. SSM – Mental Health, 10, Article 100699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2026.100699

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.ssmmh.2026.100699

Keywords: illegal eviction, generalized anxiety disorder, Black women, structural racism, housing instability, maternal health, SECURE study, GAD-7, self-help eviction, tenant rights, reproductive justice, Michigan