Direct government payments can provide meaningful support for the financial health of households. In the case of the 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), advance CTC payments reduced monthly child poverty by nearly 30%, according to research from Columbia University.

This year’s annual FinHealth Spend Report examines how households in America managed their finances and accessed credit during the second year of the pandemic, analyzing year-over-year trends for more than two dozen financial products and services.

Family and friends are a major lifeline for justice-involved individuals, providing support and advice from pre-trial to post-release.

Once justice-involved individuals are released from jail or court, they are still not released from their financial obligations to the criminal justice system.

Once justice-involved individuals re-enter society, there are numerous barriers to gain employment that often force them to make difficult decisions.

After a family member or loved one is arrested, their households are forced to juggle financial responsibilities, including staggering bills and missing payments.

The Financial Health Network presents a look into how one’s financial health impacts their ability to navigate the U.S. criminal justice system, and how their involvement in that system impacts their financial health. In partnership with the University of Southern California’s (USC) Center for Economic and Social Research, we interviewed 36 individuals who shared their multifaceted experiences with the criminal justice system, highlighting multiple areas ripe for innovation.

Justice-involved individuals and their families face a number of expenses that can create financial strains immediately after arrest, including posting bail and hiring legal representation.

With this report – an evolution of our Financially Underserved Market Size Study – we shed light on how much households paid for a variety of everyday financial products and services in 2020, through lenses of financial health, income, race, and ethnicity.

Discover opportunities to develop innovative, high-quality solutions to improve financial health for financially underserved consumers in the United States.