Study examining cross-state inequality in social safety net programs due to decentralized social provision. The authors find substantial cross-state inequality in provision, with increased inequality due to the devolution of authority under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).
There is a key disconnect between policymakers’ intent and implementation of policies. A user-centric, iterative, and data-driven approach can result result in digital technology that provides much needed data and insights at a substantially lower cost.
Though the rhetoric of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is ubiquitous when it comes to welfare programs, low-income households receive little relief from benefits programs. Most efforts to make public benefits systems more “efficient” actually just waste time and money in practice. They instead serve to stigmatize low-income families and chip away at the little assistance that remains available to them.
