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 resource allows policymakers, employers, benefits providers, and researchers assess benefits performance for constituents and identify opportunities in market and policy innovation to ensure equitable benefits distribution.
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.
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 landscape analysis examines data, design, technology, and innovation-enabled approaches that make it easier for eligible people to enroll in, and receive, federally-funded social safety net benefits, with a focus on the earliest adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
This article examines how applying a Racial Equity Framework reveals systemic inequities in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, offering insights into barriers faced by marginalized communities and potential solutions.
MITRE developed the Comprehensive Careers and Supports for Households (CCASH™) tool to help individuals understand and manage federal benefits and employment services, transitioning from a consumer-focused tool to a policy analytics system. By integrating data from sources like the U.S. Census and the Policy Rules Database, MITRE created a model that allows users to analyze and compare benefits eligibility across states, supporting evidence-based policymaking.
This guide consolidates learning and spotlights principles, insights, and emerging practices to guide municipal leaders and public-private partnerships interested in designing basic income programs that are ethical, equitable, rigorous, informative, and consequential for local, state and national policymaking.
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.
PolicyEngine is a nonprofit that provides a free, open-source web app enabling users in the US and UK to estimate taxes and benefits at the household level, while also simulating the effects of policy changes. By combining tax and benefits data, PolicyEngine helps individuals and policymakers better understand the impacts of existing policies and proposed reforms, using microsimulation models built from legislation and enhanced survey data.
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.
