Library
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Unemployment Insurance IT Modernization Strategy
This U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) strategy outlines a roadmap for modernizing the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system to enhance efficiency, equity, and access for workers.
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Designing an eligibility screener tool for Montana WIC
This case study describes Nava's with the state of Montana’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) agency to build an eligibility screener tool.
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Benefits Enrollment Field Guide
The Benefits Enrollment Field Guide looks at the landscape of America’s safety net benefits experience in 2023 and tracks the differences from our 2019 assessment based on expanded evaluation criteria. It also highlights successful paths to equitable, human-centered experiences. It examines online enrollment for Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), and WIC.
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Public Benefits Delivery & Consumer Protection
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.
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Improvements in Public Programs’ Customer Service Experiences Could Better Meet Enrollees’ Needs and Help Build Trust in Government
This resource examines how improvements in customer service experiences in public benefit programs like Medicaid, CHIP, and TANF can help better meet enrollees’ needs and build trust in government.
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What Are Human Services, and How Do State Governments Structure Them?
This report examines how state governments organize and manage human services programs, analyzing various agency structures and their impact on service delivery and coordination with the health care sector.
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Basic Income and Local Government: A Guide to Municipal Pilots
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.
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Maximizing the impact of direct cash transfers to young people: A policy toolkit
Chapin Hall collaborated with national policy experts, practitioners, and young adults with lived experience of homelessness to create a policy toolkit where tax, public benefits, and educational aid implications for young people participating in Direct Cash Transfer (DCT) programs are laid out in one place.
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Project Snapshot: PolicyEngine
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.
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Simplified, mobile-friendly SNAP application increases application rates
This research summary presents findings from a randomized controlled trial demonstrating how mRelief’s simplified SNAP application significantly increases application rates among eligible individuals.
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Re-Envisioning TANF: Toward an Anti-Racist Program That Meaningfully Serves Families
An America where no one experiences poverty is possible. Already, the U.S. has programs with the potential to make this vision a reality, including programs that provide cash assistance, like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The current TANF program provides very little cash assistance and is marked by stark racial disparities, but it has the potential to reduce child poverty, increase economic security, and advance racial equity. This report offers a vision for an anti-racist approach to the TANF program, with new statutory goals and policy recommendations to advance racial justice.
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Project Snapshot: Policy Rules Database
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.