[{"authors":"Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro","domain":"Poverty and material security","finding":"Unconditional cash transfers raised average monthly household consumption from 158 to 193 PPP dollars nine months after the transfers began.","stat":"158 to 193 PPP dollars","title":"The Short-term Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers to the Poor: Experimental Evidence from Kenya","url":"https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjw025","venue":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","why":"Giving poor households money directly, with no conditions, quickly lifts the most basic measure of material welfare.","year":2016},{"authors":"Edward Miguel and Michael Kremer","domain":"Poverty and material security","finding":"School based deworming in Kenya cut school absenteeism by one quarter, and the health gains spilled over to untreated children in nearby schools.","stat":"One quarter less absence","title":"Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities","url":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0262.2004.00481.x","venue":"Econometrica","why":"Some floor level goods, like basic child health, are so cheap and so full of spillovers that they should be funded for everyone.","year":2004},{"authors":"Edward P. Lazear","domain":"Economics and incentives","finding":"When the Safelite Glass Corporation moved workers to piece rates, output per worker rose by 44 percent.","stat":"44 percent","title":"Performance Pay and Productivity","url":"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.90.5.1346","venue":"American Economic Review","why":"How you pay people changes what they produce, so any shared system must design its rewards with care.","year":2000},{"authors":"Karthik Muralidharan and Venkatesh Sundararaman","domain":"Economics and incentives","finding":"After two years, students in schools where teachers earned bonuses averaging 3 percent of pay scored 0.27 standard deviations higher in math and 0.17 higher in language than students in control schools.","stat":"0.27 standard deviations","title":"Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India","url":"https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/61d961b0-f366-528a-9fb3-a7746e5309a1","venue":"Journal of Political Economy","why":"Small, well aimed incentives can raise public service quality for the poor at very low cost.","year":2011},{"authors":"Martina Björkman and Jakob Svensson","domain":"Governance and democracy","finding":"One year after communities began monitoring local health clinics with citizen report cards, deaths among children under five were 33 percent lower in treatment communities.","stat":"33 percent fewer deaths","title":"Power to the People: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on Community-Based Monitoring in Uganda","url":"https://reliefweb.int/report/uganda/power-people-evidence-randomized-field-experiment-community-based-monitoring-project","venue":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","why":"Organized citizen oversight, with no new funding, can make public services answer to the people they serve.","year":2009},{"authors":"Benjamin A. Olken","domain":"Governance and democracy","finding":"Raising the chance of a government audit on village road projects from 4 percent to 100 percent cut missing expenditures by about 8 percentage points.","stat":"8 percentage points","title":"Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia","url":"https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/nbrnberwo/11753.htm","venue":"Journal of Political Economy","why":"Credible, announced verification changes behavior before any punishment, which is the working core of a trust based commons.","year":2007},{"authors":"Raj Chetty and co-authors","domain":"Health and the body","finding":"The gap in life expectancy between the richest 1 percent and the poorest 1 percent was 14.6 years for men and 10.1 years for women.","stat":"14.6 years","title":"The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27063997/","venue":"JAMA","why":"It prices the floor in years of life, the only currency that counts at the base.","year":2016},{"authors":"Hannah Arem and co-authors","domain":"Health and the body","finding":"In 661,137 adults, even activity below the recommended weekly minimum came with a 20 percent lower risk of death, and 1 to 2 times the minimum came with a 31 percent lower risk.","stat":"20 percent lower risk","title":"Leisure Time Physical Activity and Mortality: A Detailed Pooled Analysis of the Dose-Response Relationship","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25844730/","venue":"JAMA Internal Medicine","why":"Movement is free and needs no clinic, so it is a health lever within everyone's reach at once.","year":2015},{"authors":"Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert","domain":"Mind and mental health","finding":"In about 250,000 sampled moments from 2,250 adults, minds were wandering 46.9 percent of the time, and people were less happy while wandering than while present, whatever they were doing.","stat":"46.9 percent","title":"A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21071660/","venue":"Science","why":"Nearly half of waking life is spent mentally elsewhere and poorer for it, so tools that gently return attention to the present serve almost everyone.","year":2010},{"authors":"Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton","domain":"Mind and mental health","finding":"In more than 450,000 survey responses, emotional well-being rose with income up to about 75,000 dollars a year and then stopped rising, even though life evaluation kept rising with income.","note":"Added at build to complete the domain after a duplicate was removed.","stat":"$75,000 a year","title":"High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20823223/","venue":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences","why":"It marks the point where money stops buying daily peace of mind, which is why raising incomes below it does such deep work.","year":2010},{"authors":"Patrick L. Hill and Nicholas A. Turiano","domain":"Meaning, values, and human flourishing","finding":"Each standard deviation rise in reported purpose in life came with a 15 percent lower risk of death over the 14 years that followed, at every adult age.","stat":"15 percent lower risk","title":"Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood","url":"https://midus.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1370.pdf","venue":"Psychological Science","why":"A reason to get up is measurable protection, not a luxury.","year":2014},{"authors":"Corey L. M. Keyes","domain":"Meaning, values, and human flourishing","finding":"Only 17.2 percent of United States adults aged 25 to 74 met the criteria for flourishing, while 12.1 percent were languishing, and languishing adults faced nearly six times the risk of a major depressive episode that flourishing adults faced.","stat":"17.2 percent flourishing","title":"The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12096700/","venue":"Journal of Health and Social Behavior","why":"The goal is not merely fewer people ill, but more people flourishing, and that gap can be counted.","year":2002},{"authors":"Scott Freeman and co-authors","domain":"Learning and education","finding":"Across 225 studies, average examination scores rose by about 6 percent under active learning, and students in traditional lecture classes were 1.5 times more likely to fail.","stat":"1.5 times more likely to fail","title":"Active Learning Increases Student Performance in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics","url":"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1319030111","venue":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences","why":"Teaching that asks learners to act, not just listen, lifts the bottom of the class most.","year":2014},{"authors":"Henry L. Roediger III and Jeffrey D. Karpicke","domain":"Learning and education","finding":"One week after learning a passage, students who studied it once and took three recall tests remembered 61 percent of it, while students who studied it four times remembered 40 percent.","stat":"61 percent vs 40 percent","title":"Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x","venue":"Psychological Science","why":"Free recall practice costs nothing and beats rereading, a learning basic tool anyone can use anywhere.","year":2006},{"authors":"Daniel M. Oppenheimer","domain":"Language and communication","finding":"Readers rated the author of a text rewritten with shorter, simpler words as more intelligent (4.80 versus 4.26 on a 7 point scale) than the author of the same text written with needlessly long words.","stat":"4.80 vs 4.26 of 7","title":"Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly","url":"https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1178","venue":"Applied Cognitive Psychology","why":"Plain words do not cost the writer standing, they earn it.","year":2006},{"authors":"Terry C. Davis and co-authors","domain":"Language and communication","finding":"Patients reading at or below the sixth grade level were 3.4 times less likely to interpret prescription warning labels correctly, and short single step instructions were understood better by readers at every level.","stat":"3.4 times less likely","title":"Low Literacy Impairs Comprehension of Prescription Drug Warning Labels","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16881945/","venue":"Journal of General Internal Medicine","why":"When a label fails, the failure sits in the wording, not the reader.","year":2006},{"authors":"Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang","domain":"Artificial intelligence and human computer interaction","finding":"In a preregistered experiment with 453 professionals, access to ChatGPT cut average time on writing tasks by 40 percent and raised output quality by 18 percent, and the gap between stronger and weaker workers shrank.","stat":"40 percent faster","title":"Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh2586","venue":"Science","why":"A shared AI tool narrowed the distance between the best and the rest.","year":2023},{"authors":"Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, and Lindsey R. Raymond","domain":"Artificial intelligence and human computer interaction","finding":"Among 5,179 customer support agents, an AI assistant raised issues resolved per hour by 14 percent on average and by 34 percent for novice and low skilled workers, with minimal change for the most experienced.","stat":"34 percent for novices","title":"Generative AI at Work","url":"https://doi.org/10.3386/w31161","venue":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","why":"The largest gains went to the people at the bottom of the skill ladder, because the tool carried the know how of top workers to everyone.","year":2025},{"authors":"Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, and J. Bradley Layton","domain":"Belonging and social connection","finding":"Across 148 studies covering 308,849 people, those with stronger social relationships had a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival, an effect the authors rank alongside quitting smoking.","stat":"50 percent greater likelihood of survival","title":"Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review","url":"https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316","venue":"PLOS Medicine","why":"Connection is not decoration on top of the floor of a life, it is part of the floor itself.","year":2010},{"authors":"Sheldon Cohen and co-authors","domain":"Belonging and social connection","finding":"In a controlled virus exposure experiment with 276 volunteers, people with only 1 to 3 types of social ties had an adjusted relative risk of 4.2 for catching a cold compared with people with 6 or more types of ties.","stat":"4.2 times the risk","title":"Social Ties and Susceptibility to the Common Cold","url":"https://www.ovid.com/journals/jama/abstract/00005407-199706250-00040~social-ties-and-susceptibility-to-the-common-cold?redirectionsource=fulltextview","venue":"JAMA","why":"A controlled experiment shows that widening a person's circle of ties changes their body, not just their mood.","year":1997},{"authors":"Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter","domain":"Cooperation and collective action","finding":"Among 240 players in a public goods game, 84.3 percent paid their own money to punish free riders at least once, and cooperation rose steadily when punishment was allowed.","stat":"84.3 percent","title":"Altruistic Punishment in Humans","url":"http://www.matchism.org/refs/Fehr_2002_AtruisticPunishment.pdf","venue":"Nature","why":"A group can police its own fairness without a boss, because ordinary members will bear a small cost to keep the shared deal honest.","year":2002},{"authors":"Devesh Rustagi, Stefanie Engel, and Michael Kosfeld","domain":"Cooperation and collective action","finding":"Across 49 self governing forest user groups in Ethiopia, a group where 60 percent of members were conditional cooperators spent about 14 more hours a month patrolling than a group with none, and such groups kept more potential crop trees per hectare.","stat":"14 more hours a month","title":"Conditional Cooperation and Costly Monitoring Explain Success in Forest Commons Management","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.1193649","venue":"Science","why":"Communities left to govern their own commons protect it when enough members cooperate on condition that others do too.","year":2010},{"authors":"Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral","domain":"Truth and shared knowledge","finding":"Tracking about 126,000 story cascades shared by some 3 million people on Twitter, the team found false stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true ones and reached 1,500 people about six times faster.","stat":"70 percent more likely","title":"The Spread of True and False News Online","url":"https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308","venue":"Science","why":"Truth does not win by default, so shared knowledge needs deliberate design and verification.","year":2018},{"authors":"Thomas Wood and Ethan Porter","domain":"Truth and shared knowledge","finding":"In five experiments with more than 10,100 subjects across 52 contested issues, the researchers found zero factual corrections that made people believe a falsehood more strongly.","stat":"Zero backfire","title":"The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes' Steadfast Factual Adherence","url":"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2819073","venue":"Political Behavior","why":"Plainly stated facts, offered to everyone, move people toward accuracy even on the questions they care about most.","year":2019},{"authors":"David Tilman, Christian Balzer, Jason Hill, Belinda L. Befort","domain":"Food systems and agriculture","finding":"Global crop demand is forecast to rise by 100 to 110 percent between 2005 and 2050.","title":"Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture","url":"http://www.pnas.org/content/108/50/20260.abstract","venue":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences","why":"A commons that raises the floor has to plan for food demand roughly doubling while pushing yields up on land already farmed, rather than clearing new land.","year":2011},{"authors":"Emily S. Cassidy, Paul C. West, James S. Gerber, Jonathan A. Foley","domain":"Food systems and agriculture","finding":"Growing crops only for direct human consumption could raise available food calories by up to 70 percent and feed an additional 4 billion people.","title":"Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare","url":"https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf","venue":"Environmental Research Letters","why":"The floor can rise a long way by changing how existing crops are used, not only by growing more.","year":2013},{"authors":"Lorna Fewtrell, Rachel B. Kaufmann, David Kay, Wayne Enanoria, Laurence Haller, John M. Colford Jr.","domain":"Water and sanitation","finding":"Across 46 studies, water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions cut diarrhoea risk, with relative risk estimates between 0.63 and 0.75.","title":"Water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions to reduce diarrhoea in less developed countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis","url":"https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(04)01253-8/abstract","venue":"The Lancet Infectious Diseases","why":"Clean water, toilets, and handwashing are basic floor goods with proven health gains that a commons can deliver at community scale.","year":2005},{"authors":"Guy Hutton, Laurence Haller, Jamie Bartram","domain":"Water and sanitation","finding":"In developing regions, each 1 US dollar invested in water and sanitation returned between 5 and 46 US dollars, depending on the intervention.","title":"Global cost-benefit analysis of water supply and sanitation interventions","url":"https://doi.org/10.2166/wh.2007.009","venue":"Journal of Water and Health","why":"Money spent on water and sanitation pays for itself many times over in time saved and illness avoided, which gives a commons a hard economic case for funding it.","year":2007},{"authors":"Tim Aubry, Paula Goering, Scott Veldhuizen, Carol E. Adair, Jimmy Bourque, Jino Distasio, and coauthors","domain":"Housing and homelessness","finding":"Over two years, Housing First participants were in stable housing 71 percent of the time, compared with 29 percent for people receiving treatment as usual.","title":"A Multiple-City RCT of Housing First With Assertive Community Treatment for Homeless Canadians With Serious Mental Illness","url":"https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201400587","venue":"Psychiatric Services","why":"Giving people a home first, without preconditions, is a working way to lift the most exposed people off the street.","year":2016},{"authors":"Philippa Howden-Chapman, Anna Matheson, Julian Crane, Helen Viggers, Malcolm Cunningham, and coauthors","domain":"Housing and homelessness","finding":"People in insulated homes in low income New Zealand communities had half the odds of reporting fair or poor health, an adjusted odds ratio of 0.50.","title":"Effect of insulating existing houses on health inequality: cluster randomised study in the community","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17324975/","venue":"BMJ","why":"Fixing the homes people already live in is a direct health intervention, so warm and dry housing belongs in the floor.","year":2007},{"authors":"Taryn Dinkelman","domain":"Energy access","finding":"In rural South Africa, household electrification raised female employment by 9 to 9.5 percentage points within five years.","title":"The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa","url":"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.7.3078","venue":"American Economic Review","why":"Basic power frees women from home work and opens paid work, so energy belongs at the base of a shared floor.","year":2011},{"authors":"Michaël Aklin, Patrick Bayer, S. P. Harish, Johannes Urpelainen","domain":"Energy access","finding":"In rural India, solar microgrids raised household electrification by 29 to 36 percentage points within a year but added only 0.99 to 1.42 hours of power a day and gave no clear gain in work or study.","title":"Does basic energy access generate socioeconomic benefits? A field experiment with off-grid solar power in India","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.1602153","venue":"Science Advances","why":"A bare connection is not enough; people need enough usable power to change daily life.","year":2017},{"authors":"Paul Gertler, James Heckman, Rodrigo Pinto, Arianna Zanolini, Christel Vermeersch, Susan Walker, Susan M. Chang, Sally Grantham-McGregor","domain":"Early childhood","finding":"Two years of weekly home visits for growth stunted toddlers in Jamaica raised their earnings by 25 percent when they were checked 20 years later.","title":"Labor market returns to an early childhood stimulation intervention in Jamaica","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1251178","venue":"Science","why":"Low cost help for parents in the first years can lift a child out of a lasting earnings gap.","year":2014},{"authors":"Arthur J. Reynolds, Judy A. Temple, Suh-Ruu Ou, Irma A. Arteaga, Barry A. B. White","domain":"Early childhood","finding":"By age 28, children from low income Chicago families in the Child-Parent Center program had health insurance coverage of 75.9 percent, compared with 63.9 percent in the comparison group.","title":"School-Based Early Childhood Education and Age-28 Well-Being: Effects by Timing, Dosage, and Subgroups","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1203618","venue":"Science","why":"A public program run at scale in ordinary schools can still protect health and income well into adult life.","year":2011},{"authors":"Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris, David Stephenson","domain":"Aging","finding":"Across the studies reviewed, loneliness raised the likelihood of death by 26 percent, social isolation by 29 percent, and living alone by 32 percent.","title":"Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691614568352","venue":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","why":"Human connection is a basic health need in later life, not a luxury a commons can leave to chance.","year":2015},{"authors":"Gill Livingston, Jonathan Huntley, Andrew Sommerlad, David Ames, Clive Ballard, and coauthors","domain":"Aging","finding":"Twelve changeable risk factors account for around 40 percent of dementia cases worldwide, so those cases could in theory be prevented or delayed.","title":"Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission","url":"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7392084/","venue":"The Lancet","why":"Much of the burden of old age can be cut by shared action on schooling, hearing, blood pressure, clean air, and social contact.","year":2020},{"authors":"World Health Organization and World Bank","domain":"Disability and inclusion","finding":"More than 1 billion people lived with a disability, and in OECD countries only 44 percent of people with disabilities were employed, against 75 percent of people without disabilities.","title":"World report on disability","url":"https://www.who.int/news/item/29-10-2013-new-world-report-shows-more-than-1-billion-people-with-disabilities-face-substantial-barriers-in-their-daily-lives","venue":"World Health Organization and World Bank report","why":"A commons that counts a billion people from the start builds its floor wide enough for everyone to stand on it.","year":2011},{"authors":"Zuyi Fang, Ilan Cerna-Turoff, Cheng Zhang, Mengyao Lu, Jamie M. Lachman, Jane Barlow","domain":"Disability and inclusion","finding":"Pooling 98 studies, the authors found that 31.7 percent of children with disabilities had experienced violence.","title":"Global estimates of violence against children with disabilities: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis","url":"https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00033-5/abstract","venue":"The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health","why":"Safety comes before learning or work, so protection for the children most at risk has to be part of the floor itself.","year":2022},{"authors":"Robert Jensen","domain":"Digital access","finding":"After mobile phones spread among Kerala fishers, their profits rose by 8 percent and the prices paid by consumers fell by 4 percent.","title":"The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector","url":"https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.122.3.879","venue":"The Quarterly Journal of Economics","why":"Cheap access to price information lets poor sellers earn more while poor buyers pay less at the same time.","year":2007},{"authors":"Tavneet Suri, William Jack","domain":"Digital access","finding":"Access to mobile money in Kenya lifted 194,000 households, 2 percent of all households, out of poverty.","title":"The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aah5309","venue":"Science","why":"A basic phone service that moves and stores money safely can cut poverty without a bank branch in place.","year":2016},{"authors":"Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, Crystal S. Yang","domain":"Law and justice","finding":"Being held for just 3 days before trial raised the probability of a guilty finding by 14 percentage points.","title":"The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges","url":"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20161503","venue":"American Economic Review","why":"Locking people up before any finding of guilt tilts the case against them and pushes them out of lawful work.","year":2018},{"authors":"Devah Pager","domain":"Law and justice","finding":"White test applicants without a criminal record received callbacks for 34 percent of jobs, compared with 17 percent for white applicants with a record.","title":"The Mark of a Criminal Record","url":"https://doi.org/10.1086/374403","venue":"American Journal of Sociology","why":"If a past record halves a fair chance at a job, people leaving prison need a real path back to earning a living.","year":2003},{"authors":"David B. Lobell, Wolfram Schlenker, Justin Costa-Roberts","domain":"Environment and climate adaptation","finding":"Climate trends from 1980 to 2008 cut global maize production by 3.8 percent and wheat production by 5.5 percent compared with a world without those trends.","title":"Climate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1204531","venue":"Science","why":"Food sits at the base of human need, so adapting staple crops is one way a commons protects the floor for everyone.","year":2011},{"authors":"Antonio Gasparrini, Yuming Guo, Masahiro Hashizume, and coauthors","domain":"Environment and climate adaptation","finding":"Across 384 locations, 7.71 percent of deaths were linked to temperatures outside the safest range, with cold linked to 7.29 percent and heat to 0.42 percent.","title":"Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26003380/","venue":"The Lancet","why":"Safe shelter, heating, cooling, and early warnings can prevent deaths that fall hardest on people with the least money and protection.","year":2015},{"authors":"Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Nathanael Goldberg, Dean Karlan, Robert Osei, William Parienté, Jeremy Shapiro, Bram Thuysbaert, Christopher Udry","domain":"Work and livelihoods","finding":"In trials with 10,495 people in six countries, 8 of 10 outcome measures still showed significant gains one year after the program ended.","title":"A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor: Evidence from six countries","url":"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1260799","venue":"Science","why":"Assets, training, coaching, cash support, and savings access given together can help the poorest people build a lasting living that others can copy openly.","year":2015},{"authors":"Michael A. Clemens, Claudio E. Montenegro, Lant Pritchett","domain":"Migration and refuge","finding":"The average price equivalent of migration barriers to the United States for low skill men was more than 13,700 dollars per worker per year.","title":"The Place Premium: Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers","url":"https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00776","venue":"The Review of Economics and Statistics","why":"Fair paths to move for work can lift a family income far more than most help given in place, so birthplace should not lock in poverty.","year":2019},{"authors":"Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner, Duncan Lawrence","domain":"Migration and refuge","finding":"One extra year of waiting for an asylum decision cut the later employment rate by 4 to 5 percentage points, a drop of 16 to 23 percent from the average rate.","title":"When lives are put on hold: Lengthy asylum processes decrease employment among refugees","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27493995/","venue":"Science Advances","why":"Fast and fair decisions let refugees earn, settle, and contribute sooner instead of losing ground while they wait in limbo.","year":2016},{"authors":"Daniel Freeman, Bryony Sheaves, Guy M. Goodwin, Ly-Mee Yu, Alecia Nickless, Paul J. Harrison, Richard Emsley, Annemarie I. Luik, Russell G. Foster, Vanashree Wadekar, Christopher Hinds, Andrew Gumley, Ray Jones, Stafford Lightman, Steve Jones, Richard Bentall, Peter Kinderman, Georgina Rowse, Traolach Brugha, Mark Blagrove, Alice M. Gregory, Leanne Fleming, Elaine Walklet, Cris Glazebrook, E. Bethan Davies, Chris Hollis, Gillian Haddock, Bev John, Mark Coulson, David Fowler, Katherine Pugh, John Cape, Peter Moseley, Gary Brown, Claire Hughes, Marc Obonsawin, Sian Coker, Edward Watkins, Matthias Schwannauer, Kenneth MacMahon, A. Niroshan Siriwardena, and Colin A. Espie","domain":"Sleep","finding":"Treating insomnia with digital cognitive behavioral therapy also reduced paranoia and hallucinations in university students.","stat":"3,755 students at 26 UK universities; insomnia improved by 4.78 points (effect size 1.11), paranoia fell 2.22 points and hallucinations 1.58 points at 10 weeks","title":"The effects of improving sleep on mental health (OASIS): a randomised controlled trial with mediation analysis","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(17)30328-0","venue":"The Lancet Psychiatry","why":"Sleep is a basic need the corpus did not cover, and this trial shows a sleep treatment moving mental health outcomes, with insomnia mediating the change.","year":2017},{"authors":"Kyla L. Wahlstrom, Beverly J. Dretzke, Molly F. Gordon, Kristin Peterson, Katherine Edwards, and Julie Gdula","domain":"Sleep","finding":"High schools that start at 8:30 AM or later let most students sleep at least eight hours, and later starts were linked to better grades, attendance, and far fewer teen car crashes.","stat":"Over 9,000 students in eight high schools in three states; more than 60 percent slept at least eight hours where school started at 8:30 AM or later; teen car crashes fell 70 percent where the start moved from 7:35 to 8:55 AM","title":"Examining the Impact of Later High School Start Times on the Health and Academic Performance of High School Students: A Multi-Site Study","url":"https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED596205","venue":"Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, University of Minnesota","why":"School start time is a policy lever over adolescent sleep that districts control directly.","year":2014},{"authors":"Sarah L. Szanton, Qian-Li Xue, Bruce Leff, Jack Guralnik, Jennifer L. Wolff, Elizabeth K. Tanner, Cynthia Boyd, Roland J. Thorpe, David Bishai, and Laura N. Gitlin","domain":"Aging","finding":"A five month home program pairing occupational therapy, nursing, and a handyman reduced disability in low income older adults.","stat":"300 low income older adults in Baltimore; activities of daily living disability scores were 30 percent lower than control at 5 months (rate ratio 0.70, 95 percent CI 0.54 to 0.93)","title":"Effect of a Biobehavioral Environmental Approach on Disability Among Low-Income Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial","url":"https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.6026","venue":"JAMA Internal Medicine","why":"CAPABLE fixes the person and the home together, and the trial measures the result in disability scores, not satisfaction.","year":2019},{"authors":"Hanne Tuntland, Mona Kristin Aaslund, Birgitte Espehaug, Oddvar Førland, and Ingvild Kjeken","domain":"Aging","finding":"Reablement, short intensive home rehabilitation aimed at the person's own goals, improved older adults' self perceived performance and satisfaction more than usual care, and the gain held at nine months.","stat":"61 participants, mean age 79; improvement of 1.4 to 1.5 points on the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure over usual care, which the paper itself notes is below the manual's 2 point cutoff for clinical relevance; no extra staff time resources were used","title":"Reablement in community-dwelling older adults: a randomised controlled trial","url":"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4634595/","venue":"BMC Geriatrics","why":"Old age care at home is a standing gap in the corpus, and this trial reports its own limit honestly: the effect was real and lasting but under the clinical relevance line.","year":2015},{"authors":"M. Katherine Shear, Ellen Frank, Patricia R. Houck, and Charles F. Reynolds III","domain":"Grief and loss","finding":"A treatment built specifically for complicated grief worked better than standard interpersonal psychotherapy.","stat":"95 people (83 women, 12 men), 16 sessions; response in 51 percent of the complicated grief treatment group versus 28 percent with interpersonal psychotherapy; number needed to treat 4.3","title":"Treatment of Complicated Grief: A Randomized Controlled Trial","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15928281/","venue":"JAMA","why":"Grief is a universal human need with almost no coverage in the corpus, and this is the field's landmark randomized trial.","year":2005},{"authors":"Nancy M. Petry, Jessica M. Peirce, Maxine L. Stitzer, Jack Blaine, John M. Roll, Allan Cohen, Jeanne Obert, Therese Killeen, Michael E. Saladin, Mark Cowell, Kimberly C. Kirby, Robert Sterling, Charlotte Royer-Malvestuto, John Hamilton, Robert E. Booth, Marilyn Macdonald, Marc Liebert, Linda Rader, Raynetta Burns, Joan DiMaria, Marc Copersino, Patricia Quinn Stabile, Ken Kolodner, and Rui Li","domain":"Addiction and recovery","finding":"Adding prize based contingency management to standard care lengthened continuous stimulant abstinence in community clinics.","stat":"415 stimulant abusers in community clinics; 4.4 weeks of objectively verified continuous abstinence with contingency management versus 2.6 weeks with standard care alone","title":"Effect of Prize-Based Incentives on Outcomes in Stimulant Abusers in Outpatient Psychosocial Treatment Programs: A National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network Study","url":"https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.62.10.1148","venue":"Archives of General Psychiatry","why":"Recovery support that works in ordinary community clinics, measured by verified abstinence rather than self report.","year":2005},{"authors":"Frances Campbell, Gabriella Conti, James J. Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Elizabeth Pungello, and Yi Pan","domain":"Early childhood","finding":"Children who received the Abecedarian early childhood program had markedly better heart and metabolic health in their mid thirties, especially the men.","stat":"Treated men's mean systolic blood pressure was 126 mm Hg versus 143 mm Hg for control men in their mid 30s; metabolic syndrome was found in 0 percent of treated men versus 1 in 4 (25 percent) of control men","title":"Early Childhood Investments Substantially Boost Adult Health","url":"https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1248429","venue":"Science","why":"It ties the earliest layer of the needs map to adult body health three decades later, in measured blood pressure and metabolic syndrome.","year":2014},{"authors":"Megan Sandel, Richard Sheward, Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, Sharon M. Coleman, Deborah A. Frank, Mariana Chilton, Maureen Black, Timothy Heeren, Justin Pasquariello, Patrick Casey, Eduardo Ochoa, and Diana Cutts","domain":"Housing and homelessness","finding":"In low income renter families, being behind on rent was associated with worse caregiver and child health. This is an observational study, so it shows association, not cause.","stat":"Over 22,000 low income renter families; adjusted odds with being behind on rent: caregiver fair or poor health 1.91, maternal depressive symptoms 2.71, child fair or poor health 1.41, child lifetime hospitalizations 1.19","title":"Unstable Housing and Caregiver and Child Health in Renter Families","url":"https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2017-2199","venue":"Pediatrics","why":"It measures housing instability short of homelessness, the stage where help is cheapest, against health on both sides of the family.","year":2018},{"authors":"Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan, and Wesley Yin","domain":"Savings","finding":"Offering a commitment savings account that restricts withdrawals until a self set goal is met raised savings balances, even though only a minority opened one.","stat":"202 of 710 offered clients (28.4 percent) opened the account; after twelve months, average savings balances were 81 percentage points higher for the treatment group than the control group, and 318 percentage points higher for those who took up the account","title":"Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence From a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines","url":"https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2006.121.2.635","venue":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","why":"A savings product designed around self control, tested in a real bank with real balances.","year":2006},{"authors":"Jessica Cohen and Pascaline Dupas","domain":"Insurance","finding":"Charging even a small price for insecticide treated bed nets cut uptake sharply, and people who got nets free were no less likely to use them.","stat":"Uptake fell by sixty percentage points when the price rose from zero to 0.60 dollars; no evidence that cost sharing selected people who needed nets more, and free nets were not used less","title":"Free Distribution or Cost-Sharing? Evidence from a Randomized Malaria Prevention Experiment","url":"https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2010.125.1.1","venue":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","why":"It prices a preventive health product experimentally, which is the household level core of insurance: what a small charge does to protection.","year":2010},{"authors":"Elizabeth Sweet, Arijit Nandi, Emma K. Adam, and Thomas W. McDade","domain":"Debt","finding":"Young adults whose debt was high relative to their assets reported more stress and depressive symptoms and had higher diastolic blood pressure. This is an observational study, so it shows association, not cause.","stat":"8,400 young adults in the Add Health study; high debt to assets was associated with perceived stress 11.7 percent higher relative to the mean, depressive symptoms 13.2 percent higher, worse self reported health, and diastolic blood pressure 1.3 percent higher","title":"The High Price of Debt: Household Financial Debt and Its Impact on Mental and Physical Health","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23849243/","venue":"Social Science and Medicine","why":"Debt is the negative side of material security, and this study measures it in both mind and body.","year":2013},{"authors":"Leah S. Karliner, Elizabeth A. Jacobs, Alice Hm Chen, and Sunita Mutha","domain":"Language and communication","finding":"Professional interpreters improved the quality of care for patients with limited English more than ad hoc interpreters did, bringing care close to the level patients without language barriers receive.","stat":"Systematic review: 28 studies met the inclusion rules and 21 assessed professional interpreters separately; in all four areas of care examined, professional interpreters improved care more than ad hoc interpreters","title":"Do Professional Interpreters Improve Clinical Care for Patients with Limited English Proficiency? A Systematic Review of the Literature","url":"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1955368/","venue":"Health Services Research","why":"Language access decides whether every other service on the map can actually be used.","year":2007},{"authors":"Francisca M. Antman","domain":"Migration and refuge","finding":"When a father migrated to the United States earlier rather than later, his daughter's schooling in Mexico rose, while a father's migration inside Mexico showed no such effect.","stat":"A father's earlier US migration can raise a daughter's educational attainment by up to 1 year compared with delaying migration until after she turned 20; paternal domestic migration showed no significant effect","title":"Gender, Educational Attainment, and the Impact of Parental Migration on Children Left Behind","url":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-012-0423-y","venue":"Journal of Population Economics","why":"Migration splits families; this paper measures what the split does to the children who stay, by the sex of the child.","year":2012},{"authors":"Sophie Mitra, Aleksandra Posarac, and Brandon Vick","domain":"Disability and inclusion","finding":"Across 15 developing countries, disability was significantly associated with higher multidimensional poverty, less schooling, lower employment, and higher medical spending in most countries.","stat":"First internationally comparable profile of its kind, from the World Health Survey across 15 developing countries; measured disability prevalence ranged from 3 percent in Lao PDR to 16 percent in Bangladesh","title":"Disability and Poverty in Developing Countries: A Multidimensional Study","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.05.024","venue":"World Development","why":"It counts disability in many dimensions at once, income, schooling, work, and medical cost, instead of income alone.","year":2013},{"authors":"Kelly R. Fisher, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Nora Newcombe, and Roberta M. Golinkoff","domain":"Play","finding":"Children taught shapes through guided play learned more than children taught by direct instruction or left to free play, and the gain was still there a week later.","stat":"70 children aged 4 to 5 taught four geometric shapes three ways; the guided play group showed improved shape knowledge over both the free play and didactic groups, still evident after 1 week","title":"Taking Shape: Supporting Preschoolers' Acquisition of Geometric Knowledge Through Guided Play","url":"https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12091","venue":"Child Development","why":"Play is how young children learn; this experiment compares kinds of play head to head instead of praising play in general.","year":2013},{"authors":"Daisy Fancourt, Rosie Perkins, Sara Ascenso, Livia A. Carvalho, Andrew Steptoe, and Aaron Williamon","domain":"Music","finding":"Ten weeks of group drumming improved depression, anxiety, social resilience, and wellbeing in mental health service users, and the gains held three months later. Groups were allocated by location rather than randomized, so the study is exploratory.","stat":"By week 10 versus a non music control: depression fell 3.41 points, anxiety 2.21 points, social resilience rose 10.59 points, and mental wellbeing rose 6.14 points; saliva markers shifted from a pro inflammatory toward an anti inflammatory profile","title":"Effects of Group Drumming Interventions on Anxiety, Depression, Social Resilience and Inflammatory Immune Response among Individuals with Mental Health Conditions","url":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151136","venue":"PLOS ONE","why":"Music made together is one of the oldest human tools for steadiness, and this study measures it in symptoms and in saliva, not only in words.","year":2016},{"authors":"Kimberly Sheridan, Erica Rosenfeld Halverson, Breanne Litts, Lisa Brahms, Lynette Jacobs-Priebe, and Trevor Owens","domain":"Craft and making","finding":"In a comparative case study of three makerspaces, learning was embedded in the making itself: people identified problems, built models, applied skills, revised, and shared. This is a qualitative study; it reports no effect size.","stat":"Three makerspaces studied as comparative cases; the same learning moves appeared across all three settings","title":"Learning in the Making: A Comparative Case Study of Three Makerspaces","url":"https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.4.brr34733723j648u","venue":"Harvard Educational Review","why":"Making things by hand is a basic human route to skill and confidence, and this study documents how the learning happens.","year":2014},{"authors":"Natalie Mueller, David Rojas-Rueda, Haneen Khreis, Marta Cirach, David Andrés, Joan Ballester, Xavier Bartoll, Carolyn Daher, Anna Deluca, Cynthia Echave, Carles Milà, Sandra Márquez, Joan Palou, Katherine Pérez, Cathryn Tonne, Mark Stevenson, Salvador Rueda, and Mark Nieuwenhuijsen","domain":"Public space","finding":"A health impact assessment estimates that building out Barcelona's full superblock plan would prevent hundreds of premature deaths a year. These are modeled estimates, not measured outcomes.","stat":"503 superblocks modeled: an estimated 667 premature deaths prevented each year (air pollution 291, noise 163, heat 117, green space 60, physical activity 36), average life expectancy up by almost 200 days, and 1.7 billion euros saved a year","title":"Changing the urban design of cities for health: The superblock model","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105132","venue":"Environment International","why":"Streets and blocks are the public space every person uses daily; this study prices one redesign in deaths, days of life, and money, with the modeling stated on its face.","year":2020},{"authors":"Joshua P. Darr, Matthew P. Hitt, and Johanna L. Dunaway","domain":"Local news","finding":"After a local newspaper closed, voters in the affected counties became more likely to vote a straight party ticket, as if the shared local information source was gone.","stat":"110 newspaper closures from 2009 to 2012; after a closure, voters were 1.9 percentage points more likely to vote a straight ticket for president and senator in 2012 than voters in matched counties","title":"Newspaper Closures Polarize Voting Behavior","url":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy051","venue":"Journal of Communication","why":"A local paper is shared ground for a place; this study measures what voting looks like after it disappears.","year":2018},{"authors":"Beverly E. Thorn, Joshua C. Eyer, Benjamin P. Van Dyke, Calia A. Torres, John W. Burns, Minjung Kim, Andrea K. Newman, Lisa C. Campbell, Brian Anderson, Phoebe R. Block, Bentley J. Bobrow, Regina Brooks, Toya T. Burton, Jennifer S. Cheavens, Colette M. DeMonte, William D. DeMonte, Crystal S. Edwards, Minjeong Jeong, Mazheruddin M. Mulla, Terence Penn, Laura J. Smith, and Deborah H. Tucker","domain":"Pain","finding":"Group cognitive behavioral therapy and group pain education, both rewritten in plain language for low literacy patients, reduced pain and improved physical function more than usual care in low income clinics.","stat":"290 low income adults with chronic pain, 10 weekly 90 minute sessions; pain intensity fell 0.80 points more with literacy adapted CBT and 0.57 points more with pain education than with usual care after treatment; physical function gains held at 6 months","title":"Literacy-Adapted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Versus Education for Chronic Pain at Low-Income Clinics: A Randomized Controlled Trial","url":"https://doi.org/10.7326/M17-0972","venue":"Annals of Internal Medicine","why":"Chronic pain care usually arrives in language its patients cannot use; this trial adapted the language first and measured whether it worked.","year":2018},{"authors":"Morgan M. Philbin, Caroline M. Parker, Mary Grace Flaherty, and Jennifer S. Hirsch","domain":"Libraries","finding":"A scoping review maps how US public libraries already do health related work, from health information and linkage to services, and argues libraries are an underused community level resource for population health. A scoping review maps a field; it does not measure an outcome effect.","stat":"The paper states the scale of the system it reviews: an estimated 17,000 public libraries in the United States receiving about four million visits each day","title":"Public Libraries: A Community-Level Resource to Advance Population Health","url":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-018-0547-4","venue":"Journal of Community Health","why":"Libraries are free, trusted, and already in nearly every community; this review gathers what they already do for health in one map.","year":2019},{"authors":"Xuesong You and Carolyn Kousky","domain":"Environment and climate adaptation","finding":"After hurricanes, insured households financed recovery mainly through their insurance while uninsured households leaned on friends and family, and insured households reported less financial strain and fewer unmet funding needs.","stat":"Survey of residents affected by four land-falling hurricanes in the United States, paired with foot traffic data on visits to local businesses; post flood visitation to many local businesses rose with greater flood insurance take-up","title":"Improving Household and Community Disaster Recovery: Evidence on the Role of Insurance","url":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jori.12466","venue":"Journal of Risk and Insurance","why":"This is climate adaptation at the household level: whether a family can pay to recover after the storm, measured in burden and unmet need.","year":2024},{"authors":"Maya Rossin-Slater, Christopher J. Ruhm, and Jane Waldfogel","domain":"Work and livelihoods","finding":"California's paid family leave program doubled new mothers' use of maternity leave, and employed mothers of toddlers worked more hours afterward, with wage income rising by a similar amount.","stat":"Average maternity leave rose from about three weeks to about six weeks for new mothers; usual weekly work hours of employed mothers of one to three year olds rose 10 to 17 percent","title":"The Effects of California's Paid Family Leave Program on Mothers' Leave-Taking and Subsequent Labor Market Outcomes","url":"http://web.stanford.edu/~mrossin/RossinRuhmWaldfogel_forJPAM_publication.pdf","venue":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","why":"The corpus held only one record in Work and livelihoods; this is the most cited US study of the first state paid leave program, from the authors' own publication text.","year":2013},{"authors":"Maja van der Velden","domain":"Repair","finding":"Community repair events extend product life, but the study finds the material and the social cannot be separated: repair builds attachment to things through tinkering, sharing, and care. This is a qualitative study; it reports no effect size.","stat":"Built from data from a worldwide community repair initiative and participant observation in a Repair Café; no effect size is reported","title":"'Fixing the World One Thing at a Time': Community Repair and a Sustainable Circular Economy","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127151","venue":"Journal of Cleaner Production","why":"Repair is the household skill the throwaway economy removed; this study documents what community repair actually does, in the field.","year":2021}]