The Abundant Birth Project mitigates racial birth disparities by funding low-income African American and Pacific Islander parents. A grant from the California Department of Social Services will now expand the program to cover 425 pregnant parents across the State of California.
In 2021, only San Francisco residents qualified for the $1,000 monthly income. Now it’s open to qualifying residents in Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.
The Abundant Birth Project was started by the equity organization Expecting Justice and the San Francisco Public Health Department. It is the first in the nation and program researchers say they hope the results will inspire similar programs to kickstart nationwide. They plan to monitor how the extra cash can help new parents and their babies.
San Francisco’s Office of Financial Empowerment says that premature births are almost twice as likely to happen to African American women as compared to white women in San Francisco.
According to Expecting Justice, supplementing pregnant parents with additional cash can ease the financial and health stress that comes from interpersonal, institutional and structural racism. They say that economic stability ultimately keeps parents’ expected children healthy, too.
