This report explores policy options Utah and other states can adopt to mitigate benefit cliffs, which occur when small income increases lead to sudden loss of public assistance.
The article explores the importance of participatory planning in policymaking, emphasizing how engaging impacted communities improves program design, equity, and trust in government, with a focus on early childhood education initiatives.
In December 2024, the Digital Benefits Network released an updated open dataset on authentication and identity proofing requirements across various public benefits applications to highlight best practices and areas for improvement in identity management.
The team introduced an AI assistant for benefits navigators to streamline the process and improve outcomes by quickly assessing client eligibility for benefits programs.
This Urban Institute report examines how public investments in children's health, education, and welfare yield significant short- and long-term benefits for both individuals and society.
This brief offers a new, anti-racist vision for transforming the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) into a program that actively pushes back against structural racism and advances racial equity and economic prosperity for all families.
This Urban Institute report identifies strategies to improve young people’s access to public benefits through targeted outreach, benefit navigation, cross-organizational partnerships, and streamlined eligibility processes.
In this updated primer, the DBN describes how identity proofing and authentication show up in public benefits applications and outlines equity and security concerns raised by common identity proofing and authentication methods.
The Atlanta Fed’s CLIFF tools provide greater transparency to workers about potential public assistance losses when their earnings increase. We find three broad themes in organization-level implementation of the CLIFF tools: identifying the tar- get population of users; integrating the tool into existing operations; and integrating the tool into coaching sessions.
