This playbook offers a comprehensive guide to enhancing unemployment benefits systems, focusing on claimant-centric approaches, equitable access, and actionable steps for state agencies.
Reddit's unemployment forums have become vital support networks during the pandemic, offering advice, emotional support, and a sense of community to those navigating job loss and financial hardship.
This Urban Institute article argues that poverty is driven by structural barriers rather than individual choices and advocates for safety net programs that address systemic inequities.
This resource is a research paper examining the role of the public safety net in insuring job losers against income loss, analyzing which government programs provide financial support and how benefits vary based on pre-job loss income levels.
This study examines how providing information about administrative burden influences public support for government programs like TANF, showing that awareness of these burdens can increase favorability toward the programs and their recipients.
This article explores innovative strategies to improve access to public benefits by reducing administrative barriers and leveraging technology for a more user-friendly experience.
Code for America helped expand GetCalFresh (a service that guides Californians through the SNAP application process and helps government deliver food assistance to people in need) from a small pilot into a statewide service. They also recently concluded a similar pilot in Michigan along with Civilla and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Demand for public benefits is rising in response to continued economic pressure on vulnerable people, in addition to changes in eligibility rules for some safety net programs. This report summarizes existing benefits access efforts, studies the successes and challenges of benefits expansion efforts through a subset of in-depth case studies, and analyzes the potential for sustaining, expanding, and replicating successful efforts.
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
The NYC Benefits Screening API provides machine-readable calculations and criteria for benefits screening that power the ACCESS NYC screening questionnaire.
