ACCESS NYC is an online public screening tool that residents can use to determine the City, State, and Federal health and human service benefit programs for which they are eligible.
The Texting Playbook provides guidance and well-researched strategies to help state agencies implement texting in support of Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and other benefits programs. It provides an overview of how to start texting clients; the types of messages to send, including real examples; Federal Communications Commision (FCC) policy guidance; how to encourage opt-ins and collect consent; how to avoid coming across as spam; and a cost analysis of texting.
Code for America’s simplified tax filing tool that allows users to claim their Child Tax Credit and any missing amount of their third stimulus payment.
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.
The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturned Roe v. Wade, leading 21 states to ban or heavily restrict abortion, exacerbating economic and health challenges for women denied care while these states also often lack supportive policies like paid leave, fair wages, and accessible public benefits for growing families.
Benefits Data Trust (BDT) is a nonprofit that connects people to public benefits through a streamlined, phone-based application system called Benefits Launch, which reduces redundant questions and speeds up the process for multiple programs. BDT's approach, supported by a custom-built rules engine, has facilitated over 800,000 benefit enrollments, helping secure over $9 billion for eligible households across seven states.
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 resource provides guidance on streamlining enrollment across public benefit programs to improve efficiency, reduce administrative burdens, and enhance access for eligible individuals and families.
A brief report on our quantitative research about messages that increase people's take-up of government benefits by making them feel like those benefits belong to them.
