In response to our recent series of posts on stagnant incomes for the middle class and poor, Jon Baron — president of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, an unaligned research group in Washington — argues that better functioning government programs could help.

Despite a myriad of new government programs and spending over the last 40 years, the system has failed to improve economic and social well-being for an astonishingly large segment of the American population. There is a different way forward, focused on increasing the effectiveness of existing funds. This way forward could be an excellent fit as the administration and Congress ponder a second-term agenda for President Obama with little new money to spend.

Census Bureau data show that over the last 40 years, average yearly income of the bottom 40 percent of U.S. households – now at $20,221 – has changed little after adjusting for inflation.

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In education, although the college graduation rate has risen, the high school graduation rate peaked around 81 percent in the early 1970s. Since then, it has been stuck between 75 and 80 percent. Department of Education data show that reading and math achievement of 17-year-olds – the end product of our K-12 educational system – has not improved over 40 years, despite a 90 percent rise in public spending per student (adjusted for inflation).

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Ending this stagnation requires a central role for government, but not through its traditional, unimaginative approach to social spending. The field of medicine shows how it could work. Medicine has seen amazing progress over the last half-century – for example, a 50 percent drop in the United States death rate from coronary heart disease and childhood cancers. A driver of that success can be applied to social spending, resulting in major gains in people’s social and economic well-being.

That driver is scientifically rigorous evidence about “what works.”

Scientifically rigorous studies – particularly, the “gold standard” of randomized controlled trials – are a mainstay of medicine, providing conclusive evidence of effectiveness for most major medical advances in recent history. In social spending, by contrast, such studies have only a toehold. Where they have been used, however, they have demonstrated the same ability to produce important, credible evidence about what works – and illuminated a path to major progress.

A recent example is the large randomized trial of a program that provides streamlined, personal assistance, through H&R Block offices, to low- and moderate- income families in completing their children’s college financial aid application. The program, costing just $90 per person, increased college attendance by a remarkable 29 percent over a four-year period, compared to a control group of families not receiving the assistance, according to a study by the economists Eric Bettinger, Bridget Terry Long, Philip Oreopoulos and Lisa Sanbonmatsu.

Another such trial has shown that so-called career academies in low-income high schools – providing students with a smaller, career-themed learning community of like-minded peers – raised their earnings by $2,200 per year over the eight years after high school, compared with a control group.

In medicine, a pharmaceutical drug or medical device backed by such evidence of effectiveness is put into widespread use, because the system is set up to reward strong evidence. The Food and Drug Administration specifically requires such evidence before licensing a drug or device for market. Licensing then signals to health care providers and patients that effectiveness has been established, spurring demand.

In social spending, though, scientific evidence plays little role in allocating resources. Historically, major programs like Head Start, Title I at the Department of Education and the Job Training Partnership Act have been set up as multibillion-dollar faucets, allocating streams of money to state and local agencies – often by formula – to support a diverse array of activities. Rigorous evidence has little say in which activities receive support. Thus, activities with strong evidence of large effects, like the H&R Block effort, may never get funds from these faucets and never expand.

The promising news is that in a few recent instances, Congress has enacted initiatives in which evidence of effectiveness is a main factor determining which activities get funds. An example is the federal Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, begun as a pilot under President Bush and expanded by President Obama. It underwrites efforts like the research-proven Nurse-Family Partnership, which provides nurse home visits to low-income first-time mothers. Evaluated in rigorous randomized trials, the partnership has been shown to reduce child abuse, neglect and injuries by 20 to 50 percent, and to generate sizable improvements in child cognitive and educational outcomes.

The administration and Congress could fundamentally shift the social spending landscape by incorporating such evidence-based funding criteria into billion-dollar federal programs, rather than just a few isolated initiatives. Doing so would create a powerful new incentive for the development, rigorous evaluation and – if effective – dissemination of new program strategies and models. It would catalyze evidence-driven improvements in an otherwise moribund system.

For 40 years, America’s promise of rising prosperity has eluded nearly half of the population. A second-term agenda that makes evidence the core principle in social spending – rather than a faucet – could restore the dream for millions of Americans.