Through deeply reported case studies and insights from focus groups, this report provides an in-depth look at the impact of pandemic-era government spending on families.
Millions in government benefits go unclaimed annually due to complex applications and lack of awareness. Simplifying processes, targeted outreach, and streamlined support can increase accessibility and ensure eligible individuals receive assistance.
This study examines how the 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) influenced housing affordability and living arrangements for low-income families.
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 report calculates the cumulative impact of major benefit programs on two types of families and how their benefits change as they move into the labor market and climb the ladder of upward mobility.
This paper discusses the country’s chronic underinvestment in children and resulting outcomes, including new data on poverty rates among young children, is inextricable from the prospects of young children; and the remarkably comprehensive pandemic-era response policies, including which changes contributed most to reducing child poverty.
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.
Our existing maze of family tax benefits — including the CTC, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), and head of household (HoH) filing status — has several structural deficiencies that make overhauling the system a prerequisite for any effort to boost support for families with children. The report offers several options for expanding and streamlining family tax benefits to address these issues.
This article examines how administrative burdens in U.S. social safety net programs have changed over the past 30 years, showing that while average burdens have declined, inequality in who faces these burdens has grown.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
This report details findings and lessons from a project to develop a calculator to help people anticipate how a change in earnings from employment would affect their net income and information on their estimated effective marginal tax rate.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
The Increasing Stimulus Payment Take-up in California report by the California Policy Lab examines barriers to accessing federal stimulus payments and provides strategies to increase take-up among eligible Californians, particularly low-income and non-filers.
