Beyond Needs and Wants: Unconditional Cash Spending Patterns Among Caregivers Involved In Child Welfare

Background & Purpose: Unlike means-tested income-based interventions, unconditional cash interventions do not restrict how funds are used by recipients. This has generated debate. There is limited evidence that cash assistance associates with problematic outcomes such as increased spending on leisure or substance use. Other studies provide evidence to the contrary and indicate that families use funds to fill gaps tied to underemployment and economic precarity, stabilizing income in ways that meet their needs. Notably, these studies offer limited insight about how caregivers themselves understand and enact spending decisions, particularly within the context of child welfare. This study evaluates spending patterns of caregivers enrolled in the Empowering Parenting with Resources (EmPwR) Study which provides a monthly cash gift to families over one year. We examine how caregivers understand, prioritize, and enact cash gift spending. In doing so, we identify conditions that shape spending behavior and may be critical for contextualizing unconditional cash intervention effects and informing policy design.

Methods: This study draws on paired semi-structured interviews with treatment caregivers (n=36) who received monthly cash gifts. Qualitative data were analyzed using a matrix analysis approach wherein deductive coding focused on planned versus actual spending were examined at baseline and 6-months. Complementary survey data provide descriptive evidence of the extent and nature of spending patterns among caregivers (n=150).

Results: Matrix analysis yielded three main themes. First, that resource scarcity and emergent circumstances contribute to a stark differential between caregivers planned spending and spending behavior. Planned expenditures reflected aspirations towards future stability; however, spending behavior remedied immediate concerns such as bills or child necessities. Second, spending patterns demonstrate that caregivers equate material necessities (e.g., diapers, food) with social belonging (e.g., clean or brand-name clothing) and emotional safety (e.g., shared meals and family outings). Third, cash fostered agency. Caregivers described increased ability to plan, make choices, and exercise parental decision-making, even through small expenditures. Survey findings reinforced these themes. Caregivers reported that the cash gift: reduced stress related to small expenses, allowed them to purchase more items for their children, created opportunities to do more fun activities, and helped them feel hopeful for the future.

Conclusions & Implications: As state and local entities expand social safety nets to include unconditional economic support, understanding how caregivers navigate spending is critical to interpreting intervention effects. Spending patterns reflect tension between aspirations and emergent need that complicates simplistic narratives about fund use within child welfare. Additionally, spending operates as a mechanism for securing wellbeing, where social belonging and dignity are as valued as material necessities. These findings challenge exclusionary narratives about system-involved families and underscore the need to ground policy and intervention design in caregivers lived realities. They invite us to reexamine how policy promotes caregivers’ definitions of wellbeing and for the development of interventions that respond to the conditions that shape decision-making.