This Issue Spotlight explores the challenges that recipients of public benefits programs offering cash assistance encounter in accessing funds through financial products or services, with a specific focus on assistance provided on prepaid cards.
In this report, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation examines benefits cliffs – the loss of eligibility for public safety-net programs and benefits they provide as income rises above eligibility limits.
The goal of the brief is to encourage policy makers and employers to consider benefits cliffs as they look to create mandatory wage increases, with a look at a legislative action in NYC.
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.
This report offers a detailed assessment of how AI and emerging technologies could impact the Social Security Administration’s disability benefits determinations, recommending guardrails and principles to protect applicant rights, mitigate bias, and promote fairness.
This report analyzes lawsuits that have been filed within the past 10 years arising from the use of algorithm-driven systems to assess people’s eligibility for, or the distribution of, public benefits. It identifies key insights from the various cases into what went wrong and analyzes the legal arguments that plaintiffs have used to challenge those systems in court.
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.
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.
Data provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity regarding benefit, program, and resource information for over 80 health and human services available to NYC residents in all eleven local law languages.
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.
