Child Poverty Action Lab

About Us

1 in 4 Dallas children are growing up in poverty. At CPAL, we are working to reduce the child poverty rate by 50% in a single generation. We operate as an unofficial R&D department for Dallas, rethinking how data can be integrated into public systems, community programs, and neighborhood life to break cycles of intergenerational poverty. Guided by evidence, we focus on impactful strategies aligned with five 'big bets' for driving economic mobility in our community: Benefits Delivery, Maternal Health, Housing, Criminal Justice, and Safety.

Three key principles underpin CPAL’s approach:

Design for scale: Child poverty is a problem of massive scale and requires the magnitude of government resources to fund solutions of equal scale. CPAL brings together the leaders of nine Dallas public agencies with a collective annual operating budget of over $10 billion to align local resources and take collective action on promising interventions.

Center on evidence: CPAL develops and applies evidence-based outcomes frameworks on child poverty alleviation programs. Data is used to determine where to develop interventions and to evaluate if those interventions are working. CPAL equips our partners and community leaders to use data so they can make better decisions.

Power with community expertise: By empowering community based organizations, residents, families, or frontline teams with tools, resources, and access to leaders, CPAL builds a broad coalition for sustainable efforts to combat child poverty.