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.
The NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) developed the NYC Benefits Platform, including ACCESS NYC, to help residents easily discover and check eligibility for over 80 social programs.
This explores how tax credit systems can be redesigned to better meet the needs of families, especially those facing systemic barriers to filing and receiving benefits.
This Code for America article discusses how tax filing can be a powerful tool for economic justice, highlighting efforts to make the tax system more accessible and equitable for low-income individuals.
This report examines how the U.S. federal government can enhance the efficiency and equity of benefit delivery by simplifying eligibility rules and using a Rules as Code approach for digital systems.
PolicyEngine US is a Python-based microsimulation model of the US tax and benefit system. It models federal individual income taxes (including credits), major benefit programs, and state income taxes (currently in six states). The PolicyEngine US package can be used as a Python package, via the PolicyEngine API, or via the policyengine.org web app.
Created by Benefits Data Trust, Benefits Launch Express is a high-level eligibility screening and assistance finder available to Philadelphia residents. The tool screens eligibility for 29 programs and is estimated to take up to 10 minutes to complete.
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.
The IRS is arguably the single most critical benefits administrator in the country, given its responsibility for tax credit-based relief programs, and COVID-19 relief payments. Despite these programs’ incredible progress in reducing poverty, and despite great strides by the IRS to implement them successfully, accessing IRS benefits remains too difficult for many low-income families. This report presents a comprehensive agenda to increase benefit coverage rates, simplify Americans’ interactions with the IRS, and decrease the portion of IRS benefits diverted to third parties.
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 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.
The Policy Rules Database (PRD), developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the National Center for Children in Poverty, consolidates complex rules for major U.S. federal and state benefit programs and tax policies into a standardized, easy-to-use format. This database allows researchers to model public assistance impacts, simulate policy changes, and analyze benefits cliffs across various household scenarios using common rules and language across different programming platforms.
